


hello

by soggywormcircus



Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Apotheosis, F/M, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Post-Break Up, so much pining, this is the only thing i've ever written in which sam is a vaguely decent person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28049082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soggywormcircus/pseuds/soggywormcircus
Summary: It's been six years since the last time Charlotte has seen Ted when she hears from him over a voicemail on her old phone she hasn't touched in a long time.And then another.And another.And then a few more, until she isn't sure what to think anymore.
Relationships: Charlotte/Ted Spankoffski
Comments: 20
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crystalphobic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalphobic/gifts).



> based on an idea from crystalphobic, to whom i owe my life

Charlotte is just drinking her morning coffee when her phone rings. She has a headache that’s probably only going to be made worse by the coffee, but some habits are hard to break. 

Coffee breaks, even when she’s not at work, have become a vital part of her routine. Which is why it’s troublesome that the phone rings right now instead just a few minutes later. 

She briefly considers ignoring the ringing, but ends up reaching for her phone anyway. It’s Sam. Charlotte takes a moment to acknowledge the fact this is barely making her feel uneasy anymore. She takes one sip of her coffee and picks up the phone. 

‘Good morning.’

‘Hey, are you home?’

Charlotte leans back in the kitchen chair and looks at her fridge. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no, it’s all good. I was just packing up and I found some of your old stuff- I’ve got this box, and I was wondering if you’d want it? There’s nothing important here as far as I can see, I just thought maybe-’

Charlotte hums. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I’ll take them off your hands. Should I drive over?’

Sam shakes his head. Even though Charlotte can’t see him, she knows. It’s weird, the mannerisms you remember even after six years apart. 

‘Nah, it’s fine, I can drive them over, I’ve got some errands to run today anyway. Is that alright with you?’

Charlotte says yes, and they hang up. Charlotte closes her eyes and drinks her coffee. 

Sam keeps his word. He doesn’t even step through her door. He hands her the box, and nods. Charlotte smiles at him. This isn’t uneasy either. It also isn’t bittersweet. It’s just Sam. 

‘Do you want to come in?’, she even offers. ‘I could make you a coffee.’ 

Sam shakes his head. ‘No, thanks. I’m good.’ And then he’s gone. 

Of all the things Charlotte had expected back when they got divorced six years ago, her relationship with Sam becoming amicable, or at least not even a little bit hostile, was definitely the one she expected least. And yet, it’s not something she thinks about lately. It just is. 

Charlotte sets the box down in her living room and forgets about it for the rest of the day. She does the things that she needs to get done, and she barely feels lonely at all. She puts on some music and pretends that it can drown out the silence in her apartment that snuck its way in the day she and Sam separated and never really left. 

Charlotte doesn’t miss Sam. Why would she? She doesn’t love him anymore, they got divorced and he doesn’t even live that far away anymore. Even when he’s going to be moved to Clivesdale in two weeks, he’ll still only be an hour-long drive away. He’s not the one to move to another state and never contact her ever again. 

But why is Charlotte thinking about that again? How foolish. 

She shakes her head and settles down on the couch. 

Humming along to the music, she opens the box. 

She can’t help but smile. Who would’ve thought that Sam would keep things like these for so long?

There’s a few of Charlotte’s old bows, a notebook she hasn’t thought of in years, and-

Oh. Well, this scarf definitely isn’t hers. It’s. 

It’s Ted’s. 

Charlotte takes the blue scarf into her hands and doesn’t dare move for a few seconds. 

It’s exactly as soft as it used to be. It even smells just the same. Charlotte hasn’t smelled this in forever. 

The memories that come back are not entirely unwelcome. There’s nice ones among them, quite a lot actually. She remembers that one night around Christmas, when the two of them were walking around the town in the dark, for no reason other than to be with each other. There was not a single cloud in the sky that night, and it was very, very cold. 

Ted had given Charlotte her scarf. She supposes he never asked for it back afterwards. 

She had wanted to hold his hand the entire night, but only dared to once they were inside his apartment. 

And now she’s here, six years later. And she’s all by herself and Ted is somewhere on the west coast, probably not even thinking about her anymore. She takes a deep breath and tries to tell herself that this is fine, that Ted’s choice has to have been the right one, because she barely even misses him anymore, and Ted must be happy where he is right now. 

She drapes the scarf around her shoulder and keeps going through the box. 

The other things in the box are mainly little things that Charlotte used to keep on her dresser, like the dried flowers Charlotte liked so much. Most of these disappeared around the time her and Sam’s marriage started breaking apart. 

Only some of these are things that she’s missed. Her apartment is filled with things that she didn’t have back when she was married. It looks like a completely different person lives here. 

Maybe that’s true. 

The thing Charlotte ends up looking at the longest is Ted’s scarf. She keeps wearing it all the way to the bedroom and puts it on the nightstand. 

She doesn’t even think about the phone on the bottom of the box until the middle of the next day. 

She’s almost sure it’s broken when she has a second look at it. She’s not sure why she plugs it in in the first place. But she does, and then she forgets again. 

Maybe she just should have left it in the box and kept doing whatever it is she’s doing lately. Wake up, get coffee, go to work, maybe go spend some time with Bill or Paul and Melissa, and then look out of the window to watch the sun go down over the lake, and try not to wish she was anywhere else instead. 

But well, she doesn’t stick to it this time. She buys some flowers for herself and cooks a nice dinner. And then she checks if the phone is charged full. 

It works perfectly fine. Putting in the code is much more muscle memory than her actually knowing it, but it works all the same.

Charlotte smiles at the old phone background, a picture of the cat she had as a child. And then she frowns. 

There's missed calls. And a lot of them. 

Charlotte doesn't use this number anymore. She got a new one around the time Ted- 

She shakes her head. This can't be right. The number has to be wrong somehow. 

She scrolls all the way down to the first missed call. It was back from six years ago. She recognises the date very well. 

There's a message left along with it. 

Charlotte drags a hand across her face. She shouldn't do this, should she? She should let the past rest and try make her way through the Hatchetfield of today, the place where she's supposed to be living. 

She should put this phone away and throw out the other things from the box with it, while she's at it. Maybe then she can finally let go. 

She really, really should. But she doesn't. Instead she takes a deep breath and presses play on the message. 

There's shaky breathing from the other side, breathing that's six years old. Even if she didn't already know, she would recognise Ted right away. There's a thousand details she hasn't thought about in years that she suddenly remembers. 

'Hey, it's uh, it's me,' Ted from six years ago says. He sounds like he's been drinking, and like he just ran a mile.

Charlotte tells herself that he doesn't sound like he's about to cry. 

‘I know, I know, I shouldn’t call. This entire thing is a terrible fucking idea.’ He scoffs. He takes another shaky breath. ‘Those are my specialty, I guess.

Listen, you need to know that I’m sorry. If there’s just one thing from this whole situation- this is the most important. You have to know.’ He sighs. It sounds like he’s dragging a hand across his face. Charlotte can picture him very well. Probably lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. In an apartment he doesn’t even live in anymore. 

If she had to picture what he would look like today, she’d come up empty. 

‘I’m sorry. And I’m gonna- I’m gonna get out of your hair, I promise. I know that you- you deserve to be happy. I want you to be happy. So I’m gonna- I’m gonna leave you alone. Don’t worry.’

Charlotte closes her eyes. This is the moment she should probably put the phone away and forget that she’s ever heard this. 

‘So yeah,’ Ted from six years ago says weakly. ‘This is- yeah, this is all of it. That’s all you need to know. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna keep bothering you. You can be happy with Sam, or do whatever it is I’m keeping you from doing.’ He sighs again. ‘Yeah. And I’m sorry. Seriously. I’m sorry.’

There’s a beat of silence that makes Charlotte wonder what else he wants to say that he isn’t. She holds her breath and waits. But the only other thing that comes out of the phone is, ‘Bye.’

Charlotte doesn’t play any of the next messages. She puts the phone down on the couch table and just stares at it for a few minutes. 

This was the first time she’s heard Ted’s voice in years. And this is probably not at all the way he would sound today. But, oh. She didn’t realise how much she’d missed hearing him. 

She hears the things he’s said for the entire rest of the day, and there’s nothing else she thinks about. 

_I’m sorry._

_You deserve to be happy._

_I want you to be happy._

_I’m gonna get out of your hair. I promise._

Back when Ted had left, Charlotte had thought about what happened for months on end. She had wondered if there was anything she could have done to keep him with her, and to maybe work things out. 

She’d thought Ted had left because he was angry and bitter. That he had spent the past six years keeping a grudge. She’d never considered there might have been a different reason. That maybe he left because he wanted to help Charlotte be happy. 

That maybe he left because he cared, and maybe while Charlotte was wondering if Ted would ever forgive her, he was thinking about the same thing. 

‘Shit,’ Charlotte mutters into her dinner. She can barely concentrate. There’s just one thing she can think of. 

That there’s other messages left. And many, many of them. 

She scrolls through them all but doesn’t dare to listen to any one of them. Instead she puts the phone on the nightstand next to Ted’s scarf and goes to sleep.

She tosses and turns the whole night, and when she does sleep, she dreams of a cold and empty apartment with one couch in the center that Ted is sitting on, dialing a phone, and dialing and dialing until she wakes up. 

It’s the middle of the night when her eyes open. She stares at the ceiling and, for some reason, listens for the ringing of the phone. It doesn’t come. It’s dead quiet. There’s not even the sound of a car passing her apartment in the darkness. 

It’s just the sound of her own breathing, and nothing else. 

‘Well,’ Charlotte says to no one. In the silence of the room it sounds like she’s screaming, even though it’s barely a whisper. ‘What is going to happen next?’

The room has no answer. Charlotte feels foolish. Of course there’s no answer. What even is she waiting for? 

She shits up and turns on her nightlight. She’s not going to get any more sleep tonight, anyway. She might as well try and break her own heart again. 

The second message is from a few days later. Charlotte plugs in her headphones, closes her eyes, and listens very intently. 

Ted sounds a little calmer this time. It’s almost a relief. He sounds like he’s alright. That’s good. 

So why does it sting in Charlotte’s chest? It doesn’t make any sense. 

‘Hey, so, uhm,’ Ted lets out a low chuckle. ‘Sorry about that message from a couple days ago. I guess I was a little- well, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s alright,’ Charlotte breathes, as if her voice could reach six years into the past and as if Ted could actually hear her. 

But he doesn’t. He just waltzes on and it doesn’t matter at all what Charlotte has to tell him. 

‘I wasn’t gonna call again,’ he says. He sounds like he’s staring into the distance without actually seeing anything. He probably looked exactly the way Charlotte does now, in the dark. She has her arms wrapped around herself. She doesn’t move an inch. 

‘I meant what I said, I’m gonna finally leave you alone, I promise, I just needed to apologise for that call. But that’s it,’ and he sounds like he really means it, and Charlotte tightens her grip around herself without knowing why at all. 

‘This is the last time I bother you, you’re going to be- well. I’m not gonna- you know. It’s all good.’

Ted takes a breath that isn’t shaky at all. That’s good. That has to be good. He’s composed and he’s alright, he’s not still weeping after her or their shared past and he’s probably in California right now living a life that he could never have with Charlotte, and that’s _good._ It is. Charlotte has no reason to listen for heartbreak in his voice so intently. 

Doesn’t she want him to be happy? What is wrong with her? 

She shakes her head, but it doesn’t make the feeling go away at all. 

‘So I guess this is goodbye,’ Ted says, and oh, god, is he really smiling?

'Yes, I suppose it is,' Charlotte says, even though she knows what Ted from six years ago doesn't know. That this isn't the last message he sends. Not the last time he's going to call her.

'I wish you best of luck and all that jazz. Sorry again for the call. Knock 'em dead.' 

The words are so Ted that the feeling of deja-vue makes Charlotte nauseous. It also makes her miss him very, very much. 

He hangs up after that, like he's scared other words will come out if he keeps the call going for too long. 

Or maybe that's just Charlotte's imagination. 

This time, Charlotte doesn't hesitate before pressing play on the next message. This one is much different from the last. Ted has been drinking, she can tell right away. He's speaking in a hushed voice. It must be late at night. 

'I can't fucking believe it,' he says with a heavy voice. 'It's really empty. It's all fucking empty. Nothing left but a couple boxes? What the fuck.' He releases a shaky breath. Charlotte takes one that's controlled and almost relieved. She feels like a terrible person. 

'I'm such a fucking idiot. I'm just gonna leave? I'm not even gonna fight for you, huh? But fuck, I-' He falls silent. Charlotte's heart has stopped in her chest. 

'I love you.'

'Oh,' Charlotte whispers. The world suddenly seems to be turning very slow. It's like the alarm clock on her nightstand has stopped. 

She wonders if she's maybe asleep and dreaming, and then Ted says it again. 

'I love you.' 

'Ted-' 

'I love you, and I want to be with you. _So much_. I'm not even out of Hatchetfield and I already regret leaving, can you believe that? I'm so fucking pathetic.' 

Charlotte doesn't say anything. She just listens to Ted's voice. It's almost drowned out by the sound of her own heartbeat. 

'I hate this town so much, you know that?' He sighs. 'Always have. When I was a teenager, all I wanted was to get as far away from here as possible. I wanted to fuck off and never come back. I didn't even care where, just off this fucking island. I hated it so much.' 

He makes a choking sound that's probably a laugh. 'If I went back in time and told seventeen year-old Ted what I'm doing right now, he would lose his shit. He would love it. And me? I don't want to go. I have to,' Ted says intently, and then interrupts himself, like he remembered what time it is. 'I have to, and still, all I wanna do is unpack all my fucking boxes and go knock on your door. Can you believe that?' 

After that, he doesn't say anything else for a while. Charlotte looks down at her phone. Thirty seconds left in the call. Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen. 

She wonders if he's just going to hang up, and leave her with this confession and nothing else, but then he says, 'I meant everything I said in your other calls. I swear to god, I want you to be happy. And I'm gonna leave you alone. But fuck, if you'd call me, if you'd tell me to, I would drop all of this. I would stay. If you'd say so.' 

He sounds like he's pleading, like he really wants Charlotte to speak up. He doesn't know yet that Charlotte isn't gonna say anything for more than half a decade. 

Ted ends the call very abruptly. Charlotte can only imagine the kind of hangover he must have woken up the day after making it. 

She wonders if he regretted what he told her that night. She shakes her head and almost rolls her eyes at herself. Of course he did. If he didn't, Charlotte would have heard those words in person, before everything that happened happened. It would have been easy.

In the next message Ted seems to be busy packing a bag for the journey. Charlotte can picture it well. Ted having the phone propped between his ear and his shoulder, trying his best to seem distracted. Trying to sound unbothered. But she can hear the edge in his voice. 

'Hey. Yeah, I know, this is getting really old, but I'm gonna apologise for that last message. I'm not even sure if you're listening to these, because I haven't heard anything from you, but if you are, I'm very sorry. You know the kind of weird shit I start talking about when I'm drunk.' He clears his throat. Charlotte hears the sound of a zipper. He's finished packing.

'Anyway, bags are packed, car is full. I'm just about to leave. Everything going great. I hope Hatchetfield won't miss me too much, huh?' 

He laughs, but there's no emotion in it but unease. Charlotte has the sentence ready on her tongue, but she doesn't tell the room how much she misses Ted. 

He won't be able to hear her anyway. 

'Yeah, I'm just gonna- I just wish you all the best. Seriously. I hope you're gonna get whatever you want. I hope you're happy.' 

'I hope you're happy too.' Charlotte knows that this is idiotic. That Ted would probably laugh at her if he knew she's talking to the emptiness of her own surroundings. But she- she wants to say it. Because it's true. 

Charlotte misses Ted every day. It's been so long since he left that a lot of the time it doesn't really feel like missing a person, it's just a feeling that she can't really explain. But it's always there. 

She misses him very much, but she also knows that he left because he had to, because this place and everything that kept him here made him miserable. She might want him to come back every day, look outside her window for his familiar car, listen at work for the sound of his voice, but she knows he can't be happy here. So it's true. She hopes he's happy. She really, really does. 

Which is why playing the next message isn't an easy decision. Listening to Ted from six years ago pack his bags and leave Hatchetfield behind doesn't feel right. In a way, it feels like she's keeping Ted here against his will. It feels like the opposite of letting go. She has a feeling they would both be better off if she just put the phone away and kept going. 

Ted wouldn't have called her if he wasn't thinking about her. Listening to his messages is like destroying the image Charlotte has painted for herself over the years; of Ted, somewhere in California, living a light and happy life, not even thinking about what once was.

It doesn't feel fair, to take this away from him. 

But she wants to hear his voice again. So when she plays the next message, she feels selfish and despicable. 

Those feelings go away very quickly when Ted starts speaking.

They tend to. Or at least they used to. No matter how evil or unfair Charlotte was feeling, just being with Ted was enough to make her feel more grounded, and lighter. It works every time, even now. 

'Hey, it's uh, it's me. This is the last call, I swear to fucking god.' 

Charlotte actually smiles at that. 

'I just called to tell you that I made it safe. It was one hell of a drive, I tell you. Almost fucking fell asleep at the goddamn wheel, but I made it. I made it.' 

He's quiet for a few seconds. Charlotte hears him walk over to what presumably is the other end of the room. A window opens. There are some faint sounds of a city. Nothing about them is familiar. It sounds like another world. 

'You would not believe me how much things around here are just- not Hatchetfield,' Ted tells her like he's read her thoughts. 'It's crazy, it's weird, it's- it's great.'

He clears his throat. He sounds like he's lying. Charlotte can always tell. Or at least she could, but this Ted is from the past after all. What could work better on him than an outdated skill? 

'Yeah, I'm gonna unpack all my shit now, I suppose.' Ted seems to be thinking about something, maybe there's something he wants to say. Whatever it is, he doesn't say it. 'Again, I just wanted you to know that I'm okay. Don't worry about me.' 

He sounds miserable, saying this, and Charlotte bites her lip. 

Ted hangs up not long after this. Charlotte plays the next message.

It’s from late at night again, this time. There’s a few seconds of silence before Ted says anything. 

‘You’re not listening to these, are you Charlotte?’

Charlotte holds her breath. It’s the first time in six years she’s heard Ted say her name. It’s enough to get her heart pounding. 

It always has been, hasn’t it?

‘I don’t know why I thought you would,’ Ted says with a bitter laugh. ‘You’re not thinking about- you’re not- fuck.’ He sighs. Charlotte wishes he would sound heartbroken or at least furious. But he doesn’t sound like anything. He just sounds tired.

‘I don’t know why I keep calling you. It doesn’t make sense. I guess I’m just a fucking idiot, huh?’ Charlotte closes her eyes. Right now, all she wants to do is go back, right to the time when Ted cared about her and Charlotte was missing him so much, and try to make things alright. Or at least make Ted sound anything else than what he sounds like right now. 

‘I just- I just really fucking miss you.’ 

‘I miss you, too,’ Charlotte breathes. ‘I still do.’ 

Ted can’t hear her. There’s nothing Charlotte can do but listen. 

‘But this is my own fault. Of course it is. This is what I do, isn’t it? I fuck shit up. I’m so fucking tired of fucking up.’ 

There’s silence for a few more seconds, then Ted scoffs. He sounds bitter. 

‘I don’t even know why I’m calling you. What the fuck am I doing? You’re not listening anyway, are you.’ It’s not a question. And Charlotte doesn’t answer this time. 

Ted doesn’t call regularly after that. Charlotte thinks he’s probably trying not to. But at least once a week, in his first six months in California, he leaves a message for her. 

She’s starting to understand what this is for him, even though he possibly doesn’t know at this point himself. It’s something familiar in an unfamiliar setting. A voice on the phone he knows in a city full of voices he’s never heard. Even if the voice always says the same thing, and never answers to what Ted has to say. 

_Hello, this is Charlotte. I’m not available to talk to you right now, but I promise I’ll get back to you if you leave a message. Thanks!_

Charlotte never gave the greeting a second thought, but now it’s almost ironic. _I promise I’ll get back to you_. Charlotte never did. Did Ted think about that? Did he simply add it to the list, just another broken promise, and nothing more?

Charlotte doesn’t know. All she knows is that Ted starts off his life in California quite miserably. He uses Charlotte’s old phone as an outlet, to yell into the void whenever he feels like his life is too quiet. 

As long as California doesn’t feel like home to Ted, Charlotte really, seriously considers it. She tries very hard not to. But it’s no use. 

She listens to the messages the entire night. When the sun goes up, she’s just a couple months into Ted’s new life. She chews on her fingernails like a child and stares at her phone. Her eyes are burning. And there’s only one thing she wants. 

She should just call him. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t she owe him at least one call back? Maybe that would be fair. To make amends. To prove that she- what, exactly? That she never stopped thinking about him, even though she never contacted him for six years?

She used to think Ted left this part of his life behind, but here he is, calling her again and again, and all that Charlotte did was stare at walls and go to work. 

Charlotte types in all the numbers once and deletes them, and then again. She stares at them. She deletes again. 

She thinks about what to say, comes up with sentences and apologies. 

_It’s me, Charlotte. You know, the woman you slept with for two years, the married one. The one that broke your heart?_

She shakes her head. She gets a cup of coffee, and listens to more messages. 

She’s so tired that everything starts to blur into a collection of anecdotes. Ted complains about California and sometimes he begrudgingly admits to not hating it. 

‘The sun never fucking goes away around here, who the fuck likes this shit? I miss the fucking clouds.’ 

‘I can’t fucking sleep. Everything about this is too big. You could walk from one end of Hatchetfield to the other in one day. I can barely get to the goddamn grocery store.’ 

‘I really fucking miss you.’

That comes up a lot. Since Ted feels confident Charlotte isn’t going to ever hear what he’s saying, for the first time he’s completely honest about what he’s feeling. Still, no matter how often he says these things, Charlotte’s heart stops in her chest every single time. 

Ted starts to get used to the rush and the heat of California. With every new message, he mentions Hatchetfield a little less. 

He keeps calling anyway, and Charlotte takes it as a sign that he isn’t forgetting her. 

She thinks this, and every time she feels like a monster. What does she want, exactly? For Ted to be miserable for over half a decade, simply because she’s lonely? That can’t be fair. 

Ted let her go so she could be happy. And even if she isn’t, shouldn’t she do the same?

Shouldn’t she be relieved when the time passing between his calls gets longer and longer, and Ted keeps sounding less out of place and more at ease? This is what Ted deserves. 

Charlotte should stop listening. She should let him be happy. Shouldn’t she?

But she can’t. Because no matter how much Ted talks about people at work he’s vaguely friends with or things he’s looking forward to, he ends every call the same way. 

‘Well, anyway. Love you. Bye.’

And even now, when it’s late in the afternoon and Charlotte is three years into Ted’s new life, he still says it every time. And it kills Charlotte that she can’t travel back into time and say it back, over and over and over again. 

It ends as sudden as it started. Ted talks about how you can barely tell that it's winter, but also that he is vaguely looking forward to New Year's. 

He says, 'I love you. Bye, Charlotte,' and Charlotte is so busy fussing over the way her name sounds in his mouth that she doesn't notice he's hung up. She checks for the next message but there. There is none. 

'Oh,' Charlotte mutters under her breath. This doesn't make sense at all. How was the first message he sent her more final than the last one? 

She checks the date. The message is two years old. 

There's a two year gap between Charlotte right now, on her bed in her empty apartment, and the last time Charlotte has heard his voice. 

Anything could have happened in that time. But it's much more likely that nothing at all happened. 

Charlotte feels a little sick. She thinks about getting up, making another cup of coffee. But she just sits there, and does nothing at all.

After a few minutes of silence, Charlotte seriously wonders if she should just play the first message again, and then maybe again, and maybe a third time. Maybe once Charlotte knows Ted's words by heart and can recite them to fill the silence, she'll know what the hell she's supposed to do next. 

She closes her eyes. Maybe she even falls asleep for a minute. She opens her eyes and looks down at her old phone. 

She thinks for a few more seconds, and then it sinks in. Charlotte realises just how ridiculous this is. So she picks up her other phone and starts dialing. 

She has another look at the clock. It’s another day again, but it’s not inhumanly early. There’s no need for her to be nervous. 

Well, apart from the years of voice messages she just listened all the way through. 

‘Hey, everything alright?’, Sam says with a tired voice. Charlotte doesn’t wonder what he might be thinking, it just comes right out. If she doesn’t tell anyone about this, she’s going to scream. 

‘He left me messages.’

Sam is quiet for a few moments. ‘What?’

‘Ted. He left me- he left me a million voice messages.’ 

‘What, you mean… from California?’

‘Yes,’ Charlotte breathes. She’s suddenly very, very tired. ‘Until two years ago. Sam, he left so many messages.’

‘Okay, listen, it’s going to be okay,’ Sam says. Charlotte almost laughs. She doesn’t think she has heard Sam say something like this in years. The world is really upside down. ‘What do you want to do? Do you want me to come over? Or maybe you want me to meet you somewhere? We could go have a coffee, and then you can tell me what’s going on.’ 

Charlotte says yes, and now she and Sam are sitting at Beanies’ and Charlotte has told Sam everything. 

She isn’t even sure why she’s talking to him, instead of anyone else. Maybe she thinks that Sam knows Ted the best, or maybe it’s just because it was this long ago, part of the kind of past that Sam belongs to. She tries not to think about it. 

'Am I keeping you from something important?', Charlotte asks suddenly, when she's done telling the story and Sam has taken a few seconds to let it sink in. 

'No. No, don't worry about it. All my stuff is packed and ready to go.' He leans back in his chair, hands wrapped around his cup of coffee. 'This is better than sitting all day in my empty apartment.'

Charlotte nods. She looks down at her coffee. 'Are you having second thoughts?', she asks, and barely sounds careful. 'About Clivesdale?' 

Sam chuckles, and shakes his head. 'No, I don't think so. I want to move, it's a good job, good place, you know. It's just- it's just weird, I guess. I mean, I grew up in Hatchetfield. Lived here my whole life. It's strange to leave it behind, even now, with nothing keeping me here.' 

Charlotte thinks of Ted, packing his bags and leaving so sudden, without saying goodbye anywhere than in the message of a missed call on a phone that no one is using anymore. 'I can imagine,' she says quietly. 

'So,' Sam says, and there's the hint of a smile on his face. 'What are you gonna do?' 

Charlotte takes in her ex-husband's face and, for a moment, is only floored that this is really happening. That she went to him for advice, and he's really giving it. That Sam and the man he was six years ago are so nothing alike at all. 

It's nice, almost. It's absolutely strange and confusing, but it is nice. 

'I don't know,' Charlotte says. She thinks she might be lying. 

She looks away from Sam, worried he might see it. 

'I mean,' he says with a shrug, 'it's been two years since the last time he called you, you know. If you want to let it go, now would be a good time.' 

Charlotte nods. 'I know,' she says. 'You're right.' She looks down into her coffee and doesn't say anything. 

There's silence then, during which Sam has a long look at her. Then, the smile that was only hinted at before spreads over his face completely. 'You want to go find him, don't you?' 

Charlotte looks up. There's a tiny grin that she tries to fight, but can't. 

‘I think I do,’ she admits. ‘God, is that crazy?’

Sam doesn’t look at her like she’s crazy. He doesn’t even look very surprised. ‘It is a little crazy,’ he says with a very unconcerned face. ‘But, you know, not much crazier than calling an ex and leaving voice messages for four years.’

‘I’m not really an ex,’ Charlotte says quietly. Sam only shrugs. 

‘Close enough,’ he says anyway, then he leans closer towards her. ‘What is your plan, though? If you find him, what are you gonna say?’

Charlotte sighs. She stirs some sugar into her coffee, even though she’s already drunk half of it. ‘I don’t know, Sam,’ she says quietly. ‘I need to- I have to- I don’t know.’ She closes her eyes and takes a breath. ‘I need to at least tell him I’m sorry. And that I- that I heard him.’

Now Sam's expression softens a little, and he says the next few words carefully, like he's worried they'll hurt Charlotte. 'You know, he might not want to hear that. Maybe all he wants to do is to forget.' 

Charlotte nods. That's what she's worried about, too. But it doesn't worry her as much as the thought that maybe, Ted doesn't want to forget.

'Maybe,' she says. 'But I- I need to tell him. And if he's moved on, if he's completely over everything and doesn't think about it anymore, not even a little-' She looks up, and realises that she means what she's saying and that god, she really wants to go find Ted. How irrational. 

'-then I want to hear it from him,' she finishes, and downs the rest of her half cold coffee. 

Sam smiles, and he almost looks proud for a moment. 'Well,' he says, 'let me know how it goes.' 

The next time Charlotte is at work, she spends a very long time just looking at Paul before she really starts to talk to him. 

She can't really help, lately, but to see things with eyes from six years ago, to look at Hatchetfield the way Ted has last seen it. 

Paul doesn't really look all that different. He still looks like Paul, mostly. The same suit and tie, his face crunches up the same way when he concentrates, and the polite smile he gives as a greeting every morning is also the same.

But there's also the fact that he's slightly more relaxed, that his breaks have become longer and that he sometimes hums to himself, very, very quietly. 

Right now, he looks especially relaxed. Maybe the text he just received was from Emma, telling him about her frustrating misadventures at work. The smile on his face is subtle, but it’s very nice. It’s a shame that it disappears as soon as Charlotte starts talking. 

‘Paul, have you had any chances to talk to Ted recently?’

He looks up from his screen, blinks a few times before his eyes focus on Charlotte properly. He frowns. ‘Ted?’, he asks. ‘You mean- uh, no, no, not really. Not since he moved at least. Been a while.’

Charlotte nods. The next few words stay on her tongue for way too long before she says them, and there’s a silence passing between the two of them that Charlotte hates. 

Not as much as the words that come afterwards, but still. 

‘You don’t happen to have- you don’t happen to have his address, do you, Paul?’

She doesn’t look at him when she says it. It’s enough to hear the breath that comes out of Paul’s nose, sounding a little too much like a laugh, but also not at all. ‘His address? What, you mean in California?’ 

Charlotte nods. 

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I just-’ Charlotte doesn’t finish the sentence, and looks at Paul instead. Whatever he sees in her face seems to be enough to make him understand. He takes one deep breath and reaches for his empty mug. He has a disappointed look into it and looks at Charlotte again. 

‘You want to go… visit him?’ He stumbles around the word a little, like it doesn’t seem quite right for him in this context, and it probably isn’t. Charlotte isn’t some old friend paying someone she once knew a visit. Or at least that isn’t how this feels. 

That’s why answering this question isn’t very easy. Charlotte thinks about how to word this for a little while, but she’s coming up empty, so all she does is nod, without looking at Paul. 

Paul pinches the bridge of his nose, and he looks very, very tired. Charlotte almost feels bad for asking him. She would have maybe even changed the subject, a few years ago. Back when she didn’t know, and when she wasn’t missing Ted as much as she is now. 

‘Charlotte,’ Paul says, drawing out her name and looking at her in a way that’s almost worried, ‘are you sure this is a good idea? I just mean, back when Ted left, I don’t know how much of that you were around to notice, but when he left, he was really hurt. I don’t know if he… I don’t know if this would be good for him.’

Charlotte closes her eyes. What is she supposed to say? It’s not like Paul is wrong about this, it’s not like Charlotte hasn’t thought about this herself. 

She wants to take Paul by the shoulders and shake him, she wants to scream out loud that _he never stopped contacting me until two years ago, he told me he loved me over and over again and I haven’t seen him in six years but I think I might still love him and I’m so scared I made the biggest mistake of my life and-_

‘I know, Paul,’ Charlotte says, her voice gentle and soft enough to smooth out Paul’s forehead at least a little. Maybe this is where he remembers that he knows Charlotte, and that he knows her as someone that doesn’t tend to do a lot of damage in other people’s lives (apart from her own, at least). ‘I know. That’s why I- I’m trying to make amends.’

She tries a smile. It doesn’t exactly work. She can imagine her smile looks a lot like they used to back when she was still married. She smiles a little wider now. But she also doesn’t smile as often. 

It works on Paul. His expression softens, and he almost smiles back. ‘What do I know,’ he mutters, ‘he might actually like that. It’s been a pretty long while, after all.’ 

‘That’s right,’ Charlotte says. ‘Six years.’ 

Of course it’s a lie, but Charlotte doesn’t think she can say the truth out loud another time without cracking. 

Paul has Ted’s address, and he wishes Charlotte luck and Charlotte thinks to herself that she really needs it. 

She sits at her kitchen table and stares down at the letters for a long while before she even decides anything else. She studies them, and tries to find something in the words that remind her of Ted. Something that maybe is familiar. 

There’s not much there, but maybe Charlotte is just going insane. It’s just letters, the name of a street, and some numbers. What is she expecting?

She keeps expecting the Ted of today to be the same that left her all these messages and said all these honest things. But she also keeps absolutely dreading that. 

This whole thing would be a lot easier for Charlotte, she think to herself right before going to bed, if she new just exactly what she wanted. From Ted, from this journey, from the future. She tries to put into words what she hopes she’ll find. She’s lying in bed and staring at the ceiling but there’s nothing, at least not one full, clear sentence. 

All that Charlotte feels is frustration, and it keeps her up half the night. 

The next day she starts packing her bag. The further she gets, the more she’s feeling like a fool. She’s never been the kind of woman to blindly walk into an adventure, to go where her heart takes her. 

The biggest adventure she ever stumbled into was being and falling in love with Ted. 

She’s not even in love with Ted anymore, is she? She might think of him all the time, and maybe she thinks that she still feels things for him, but that must simply be her own loneliness, because Ted is gone and he’s moved on from Charlotte and surely he’s alright in his California apartment, and-

She shakes her head, and folds a shirt to put it in her bag. This has to be right. Even if she only stays a day, or just a few hours. This has to be right. 

It has to be. 

And that’s what she keeps telling herself until it’s a very early morning and Charlotte is standing on the bus stop near the bridge, her bag filled with clothes unfit for the weather they’re having right now. 

She’s never been to California. She and Sam had gone to Canada for their honeymoon. That was twenty years ago, and she hadn’t left Hatchetfield since then. 

That’s what she’s thinking about when she gets on the bus. They cross the bridge and drive into Clivesdale. Everything around Charlotte is very familiar, and she looks out of the window until it isn’t, anymore. 

The drive takes a very long time. It’s something that Charlotte isn’t used to, this bigness, an area that’s so vast that you can drive through the entire night, and not get anywhere by morning. Charlotte always used to watch the lake, and that was the biggest her world had ever been. Charlotte had always lived in Hatchetfield. That was the biggest her world had ever been. 

She doesn’t take her eyes off the world outside of the window for a long time. Maybe she thinks it’s a distraction, that it helps her not to think of what is ahead of her. What is ahead of her? Maybe it’s nothing at all. She doesn’t know. 

She tries playing some music, but all of the songs remind her of Ted. When they drive through a town, all the people seem to have Ted’s face, and when she hears the people behind her on the bus speak, it’s like she hears Ted’s voice instead of theirs. It feels like she's travelling back through time. 

Charlotte tries to think of anything else, and outside the window, the whole world seems to pass her by. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost forgot to post this, off to a great start apparently

Sometimes, Ted looks at himself in the mirror and really believes he's okay. There are moments when he laughs at something someone said, really laughs, and doesn't make fun of them, when he feels like yes, this is a place he belongs. This is home. And he doesn't have anything to miss.

Today isn't exactly one of those days. It's more like one of the days the sun is simply too bright in his eyes, and all he wants to do is get into his car and drive until he makes it to a huge lake, one he can just sit by and look at the water and finally have that blank mind he always dreamed of.

But even with this, there's a sense of optimism. There always is lately, and it's so strange. Strangest is that Ted is actually getting used to the feeling. 

He's here, and it's warm and sunny and Ted goes to work and meets up with people he likes. 

There's a knock on his apartment door. Ted looks up from the kitchen counter he's chopping vegetables on. His shoulders are relaxed when he walks to the door. 

So yeah, he has friends and he knows the streets in his city. He doesn't hate waking up here every morning, and he doesn't wish he was anywhere else. Sure, maybe he hasn't had an actual relationship in a long time, but he's still completely and totally over his feelings for- 

He opens the door to find Charlotte standing right outside. 

Oh. Fuck.

He recognises her right away, of course, but his brain still needs a few seconds to catch up. 

She’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt that he’s never seen before. There’s no bow in her hair, but instead a pair of sunglasses is sitting on her head. 

She looks ridiculously beautiful. And she’s got baggage with her.

‘Hey,’ she says, and that’s when it sinks in. That she’s really here. In his doorway. _Charlotte._ And she’s looking at him, and she’s really here, and she’s speaking to him, and-

Ted spends about seven seconds doing nothing but blinking. Then, he somehow manages to force out a mangled and quiet, ‘hey.’ 

Charlotte doesn’t smile at him. That would probably too much to ask. And, well, it would probably also kill Ted right here, on the spot. 

‘How-,’ Ted says, stops himself, finds that what he’s about to ask does make a little sense, and continues. ‘How did you find me?’

He watches Charlotte very intently, looking for anything in her eyes. Maybe he can find out the reason why the fuck she is here. Maybe he owes her some money. Maybe she realised that he’s an asshole and has come to finally beat his ass like someone really should have six years ago. 

He doesn’t find a single hint, and he honestly isn’t even trying that hard. He just realised that this is the first time in a very long time he’s seen her without a wedding ring. 

Charlotte looks away. Her eyes are fixed to the doorframe when she answers. ‘Paul gave me your address.’ 

‘Right.’ Fucking Paul. No one folds like Paul does. 

Charlotte looks at him now. She's chewing on her lip. 'I hope this is-' She gestures to herself and her bag. 'I hope you don't mind that I-'

'Oh,' Ted says, 'no, no, it's okay, I mean, don't worry.' He looks away. 'You look good,' he forces out. Of course he means it, but that doesn't make it any harder to say. 

'Thanks,' Charlotte says with a very small smile. 'You too.' 

Ha. Turns out Charlotte is still a liar. 

Oh god, what the fuck is happening here? 

'Why are you here?', he blurts out and immediately regrets it. He doesn't even wanna know, he just wants to- 

He doesn't manage to come up with what the fuck it is that he wants, because Charlotte interrupts his thought by saying, 'I listened to your messages.' 

The world actually stops turning for a second. Ted uses that second to stare at Charlotte like the dumbest bitch on the planet, and once the second has passed and the world keeps turning, he is not doing anything different at all. 

'The voice messages.' Ted is stuck remembering every single voice messages he's ever sent in the last six years all at once, and it's not very fun. 

He thinks about defending himself, but he really doesn't have anything going for him. 

Charlotte nods, and her face is very unreadable and she seems to be waiting for Ted to say something about this. 

'Huh,' Ted says. 'Okay. I see. That makes sense.' He nods. He smiles. 

He closes the door in Charlotte's face. 

Yep. He's really good at dealing with things. 

'Fuck,' he mutters. He leans against the door and slides down to the bottom. 

So Charlotte is here. Ted picks up his phone before realising that there's nobody to text in this situation, so what he does instead is send a few cryptic and upset emojis to what he thinks is probably still Paul's number, most likely. 

Fuck, what is she doing here? Does she want him to apologise? Couldn't she have just called? Ted could have apologised on the phone no problem. He can't even look at her to apologise like this. As soon as he'd opened his mouth everything would blurt right out, all the shit he's already said on the phone that Charlotte already knows anyway, oh _fuck_ , she knows, why the fuck did he leave all those dumbass messages, _why is Charlotte here_?

'Ted?' Charlotte knocks on his door softly. 'Can you let me in, please?' 

'No,' Ted croaks and really hates it very much. 'Charlotte, this is a very bad time for me, alright?' 

'Ted, please,' Charlotte says with another knock, 'please, the neighbors are starting to look.' 

'So, leave?', Ted says weakly. God, he's such an asshole. He wants to yell at her that the messages were years ago, Charlotte, and maybe you should call before you show up here unannounced to give me a damn heart attack. 

'I can't, Ted, I have nowhere to go.' 

Ted thinks about how she hasn't said his name in six years. And that it's a really nice sound. Nobody in California says his name like that. 

Ted bangs his head against the wall again. 

He hears one more, 'Ted, please,' from Charlotte, and then it's quiet for a long time. 

Ted stares down at his own hands and buries his face in them. Maybe, if he just doesn't say anything for multiple minutes, she's going to leave and go right back to Hatchetfield. Maybe she's already gone. 

Just the thought of it makes him feel so disappointed that he almost jumps to his feet to run after her. 

Goddamnit, Ted. You can't really do this. This is a mistake.

Charlotte had always been a mistake. She was married, unhappily but still committed, she used to only call him when she was lonely or hurt and Ted would always feel empty as soon as she was out the door. She would always look at Ted like he was her greatest regret, and you know what? He probably was. 

But she was also smart, and kind, and she laughed at his jokes even they were terrible, and fuck, she was funny. 

She never believed it when he said it (and he used to say it a lot), but she was so special. 

She is. 

'Fuck,' Ted mutters under his breath. 'I cannot believe I'm doing this.' 

Charlotte is still there when he opens the door again. 

She's sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. Her eyes open when she hears the door click open, but she doesn't get up. 

'Fine,' Ted says, 'you can come in. I'm making dinner anyway. You can have the couch. But I need a cigarette first.' 

Charlotte looks at him for a long time, and Ted almost thinks she's going to say no, and go home. But then she smiles. 

'A cigarette sounds great.' 

Ted doesn’t smoke much, lately, mostly because his friends tend to give him shit for it. This is a special occasion, though. The occasion in this case is that his heart is beating out of his damn chest because Charlotte is in his apartment. 

She looks very out of place, here, even though most of the furniture is the same he had in Hatchetfield. She looks around with a quiet smile on her face and then says, ‘It’s much tidier than I thought it was going to be.’

Ted looks up from his vegetables. He tells himself that he isn’t embarrassed. ‘What, you expect this to be the place of an immortal bachelor or something? People get older.’

‘Oh,’ Charlotte says. She turns around to him. ‘I didn’t know you were- I thought you were-’

‘Oh, jesus,’ Ted says when he realises what she means and goes beet-red. ‘Fuck no, I’m not- I mean- jesus fuck, I live alone. Just because I don’t live like a single bastard doesn’t mean that I’m not one, okay? I’m just a little older, that’s it.’ 

He looks at Charlotte, scanning her expression for- for what, exactly? Relief? Goddamnit, he’s pathetic. 

‘Oh, I see,’ she simply says. There’s no trace of anything on her face, simply that polite smile she used to use on customers. She never looked at Ted like that. Even when she did try to hide things from him, Ted could always tell. He’d always know. He never managed to read further, but at least that was clear.

It seems Charlotte had time to practice, and to get much better at this. Maybe better than him. 

‘Yeah, I mean, lots of things changed. Is it really that weird of me to clean up my damn apartment once in a while?’

Charlotte walks between his couch and his television like she’s trying to see if she still fits in there somehow. ‘You didn’t use to cook,’ she says, ‘did you?’

‘Uh,’ Ted says. He looks down at his meals and shrugs. ‘I guess? I don’t know. It’s not like I always had a dream of cooking that I could never live in Hatchetfield.’ It feels very weird to say that name out loud. But really, not much weirder than Charlotte actually being here. 

Charlotte smiles. ‘Do you like it?’, she asks. She isn’t looking at him. Ted shrugs again. ‘I guess,’ he says. He focuses all his attention on the vegetables on his cutting board. 

He thinks he can just ignore the silence, and maybe Charlotte as well, but of course he's wrong, because fucking hell, this is Charlotte. If there’s one person in the world Ted can’t manage to ignore, it’s the one wandering around his living room like a ghost. 

‘Hey,’ he finally says once the silence becomes so loud Ted starts considering screaming in order to drown it out. ‘Do you maybe want to help me?’

Charlotte looks at him, hands in the pockets of her jeans. Then, she smiles. 

Fuck. He shouldn't have let her inside his apartment. Everything is only going to get worse from this point on. 

He gives Charlotte a knife and then they’re next to each other in complete silence. Charlotte is very good at this. She’s much more patient than Ted, who just kinda chops away until the pieces are small enough. Charlotte, on the other hand, works in a precise way. There are moments Ted forgets to do his own parts and just watches her hands. 

It’s so domestic and casual that Ted’s knees almost give in. 

‘How long are you going to stay in town?’, Ted asks once everything is finely chopped and cooking in a pan. Charlotte doesn’t look at him when she answers. ‘I took one week off at work.’ 

‘At CCRP Technical? You still work there?’ 

Charlotte nods. ‘Not much has changed around Hatchetfield.’

‘What, is the whole gang still there?’

‘Yes, I think so. I still work with Bill and Paul, at least.’ 

Ted smiles. ‘I haven’t heard anything in a while. How are they?’

‘Oh, well,’ Charlotte shrugs, ‘same as usual, I think. Bill is doing better now that the whole divorce business is over. Him and Alice, they spend a little more time together. He’s around Clivesdale a lot. And Paul, well.’ She smiles. ‘He’s really good, I think.’

‘He’s with Emma, isn’t he? With the cranky barista?’

Charlotte laughs. ‘Yes, her. They’ve been dating for a few years now. Paul is almost getting into trouble at work, because he spends all his breaks over at Beanie’s.’

Ted snorts. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I can imagine.’ And then, quieter, ‘good for him.’

'You don't keep contact with them?', Charlotte asks. She's trying to sound casual, like the answer doesn't really matter to her all that much. It's not exactly convincing. Ted wonders if he should be relieved that Charlotte apparently still isn't perfect at hiding things she doesn't want Ted to see. 

Ted shakes his head. 'I used to. Coffee?' He raises his eyebrows at Charlotte, and she nods. 'The first few months, maybe even the first year, Paul would call me once every few weeks.' He pushes some buttons on his coffee machine, and when it's done, he gives Charlotte a cup. When she takes it, their hands touch. Ted tries to think of something other than the memories of getting drunk in his half-empty apartment and rambling on a phone call that will never be listened to.

Except it was. 

'But sooner or later, there's other things to do. I haven't heard from him in a long while. I mean, I don't mind. I'm not a part of his life anymore.' 

Charlotte takes a sip of her coffee. Her face is unreadable again. 

He decides to change the subject. 

'So, is there anything in particular you'd like to do here? Anything you wanna see?' 

Charlotte shrugs. 'You tell me,' she says. 'What should I have done in this town before going home?' 

It takes a while before Ted answers. He settles on a noncommittal hum. 'This isn't Los Angeles, you know that, right?' He leans against his counter. 'Not exactly much to see here.'

Now she smiles. ‘Maybe not, but this is where you’re living, isn’t it? You tell me what there is to see.’

‘Oh, jesus christ,’ Ted mutters. ‘You want to see what I do in this city?’ 

‘What, is that going to be a problem?’ 

It’s already bad enough that Charlotte is here in his apartment, a place that used to be a Charlotte-less place for the past six years. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see her, but it’s not exactly easy either. The thought of walking to work or meeting friends once Charlotte is gone, and them reminding him of Charlotte, too- 

It’s not very fun to think about. 

‘Well, no,’ Ted says, like a liar. ‘It’s just not very interesting, you know. Pretty sure you’d be disappointed.’ 

Charlotte looks at him with thoughtful eyes. The smile comes back slowly and carefully, like she’s not sure if it’s safe to smile at Ted. Honest to god, it probably isn’t. Every smile of Charlotte so far has made his heart speed up. God only knows how many smiles he has left before he dies. 

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Charlotte finally says, ‘why would it be boring to see how you live your life? I mean sure, I might still live the same way in the same town but come on - look at this apartment. How can this not be interesting?’

‘Uh, well,’ Ted mumbles and turns around to the stove to check on his dinner, and yeah, also to avoid Charlotte’s eyes. ‘Sure, yeah, whatever, let’s do it. Tomorrow?’

Charlotte will leave in a week. One week, and then she’s off to Hatchetfield and presumably out of his life forever. And Ted is completely relieved about that, because Charlotte just showing up here out of fucking nowhere has really pulled the rug underneath his feet, and it’s enough now, thank you very much. 

Yeah, the thought of Charlotte leaving again makes Ted feel nothing but relief. Honestly. Shut the fuck up. 

Ted splits his dinner between the two of them and Charlotte seems to love every bite. Ted tries his best not to stare at her during the entire dinner. 

‘Are you sure this is alright with you?’, Ted asks once he’s made a bed for Charlotte on the couch. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do if she says no. Let him sleep in her bed? Like hell. This is already domestic enough. Ted doesn’t need his bedsheets smelling like Charlotte for weeks after she’s gone. 

It took him forever to get rid of the smell the first time around. 

‘Of course, it’s perfect,’ Charlotte says with a tiny smile. ‘It’s an adventure.’

Ted scoffs. ‘If you call this an adventure your standards are sadly low.’ 

He looks down at his couch for a few seconds, then throws a glance to Charlotte, standing next to him with her bag. He clears his throat. 

‘Well, call me if you need anything.’ He turns around and walks towards his bedroom door. 

‘Ted, wait.’

Ted freezes in the doorway and turns around. He keeps his eyes trained to Charlotte’s knees. ‘Yeah?’

‘Look, I-’ Charlotte bites her lip. ‘I’m sorry. I get that this isn’t- I’m sorry for showing up unannounced, and that I-’ She trails off, and that’s all she says. 

Ted scoffs. ‘You did play a number on me, Charlotte,’ he say. He’s trying to look like this is a fun and casual conversation and not like Ted’s heart is actually beating in his throat right now. 

Charlotte looks like she doesn’t buy it, so Ted adds, ‘seriously, it’s fine. It’s… a surprise, but I’m happy to see you. Seriously.' 

Charlotte just looks at him for a moment, and then she smiles. It’s a small and it’s a sweet smile and it makes Ted’s knees go weak. ‘Thanks, Ted,’ she says. ‘Sleep well.'

Ted nods at her, and he turns around and walks into his bedroom and closes the door behind him. 

She’s really here, seriously, in his apartment, planning to stay for the rest of the week, and Ted is just supposed to spend time with her, like they’re just two people? 

She’s so fucking pretty. It’s been years since he’s seen her and she’s still so pretty. Something about it is just so unfair. 

Ted doesn’t sleep that night. He’s listening intently the whole night, but all he can hear is the cars passing his apartment building. 

When he wakes up, he can hear Charlotte in his kitchen. He takes a moment to stare at the ceiling and acknowledge that yeah, this is really happening, this is what his goddamn life has come to. Charlotte is six years older and she’s here, in his kitchen, making coffee or doing something else that’s painfully domestic. 

Oh, and yeah, she’s also listened to all the goddamn voice messages he’s sent her for years. What’s that about?

She hasn’t even mentioned them again. Every time she opens her mouth Ted thinks this is it, this is the moment she asks him and his heart is going to melt through the floor and this time, he won’t be able to just slam the door in her face. 

Ted has not been this scared in a very long time, but he gets out of bed to meet Charlotte in the kitchen anyway. Because yeah, it’s been a while, and Charlotte still is a person that meant a lot to him, a while ago, and it’s almost nice to see her again. 

It would just be nice if their reunion wasn’t clouded by ridiculous mistakes Ted has made in the past. 

‘When did you start drinking coffee?’, Charlotte asks when Ted walks into the room. ‘You never used to have a coffee machine in your old apartment.’ She puts a steaming cup down on the table between them. Ted mutters a thanks and takes it. 

‘Yeah, well.’ He takes one sip. It’s perfect. ‘I’m not drinking it for the taste. Still tastes like shit to me. But it does the job, so whatever.’ 

Charlotte chuckles. ‘I see.’ 

Ted decides to take Charlotte out for breakfast. Wether or not this is because it really shakes him to see her in his apartment, where he’s lived, alone, for the past six years, trying not to think about her, is something that he doesn’t think about, and definitely hasn’t thought about the entire night, because he’s not a fucking coward or anything like that, alright?

Anyway, the place he takes her to get some croissants and some more coffee is about a half-hour walk away from his apartment. It’s a place that Ted goes to every once in a while, but not often enough for it to be dangerous to take Charlotte there. 

Watching Charlotte walk through the streets of his city (because yeah, it is his city, he isn’t sure when he started thinking so, but he does) is very strange. She looks out of place there, Charlotte from Michigan where it’s always dark, blinking up into the sun, wearing hot pants and a white t-shirt, sunglasses that rest in her hair. She looks at every building and every corner with an open curiosity that he doesn’t remember having seen on her before. 

She looks so out of place, and still, there’s a strange confidence that she carries that makes her look like she belongs here, even though everything around her is unfamiliar and strange. 

‘It’s nice here,’ Charlotte says. She’s looking up at the sky, maybe looking for clouds. There are no clouds around here. It's something that always used to bewilder Ted when he first came here. He’s used to it now. ‘I didn’t think you-’ she stops herself, bites her lip. She’s still looking up, her neck craned. Ted tries his best not to stare at it too much. He thinks he’s probably failing miserably. ‘Didn’t think what?’, Ted asks when the silence becomes too much. Charlotte looks at him. She smiles. 

‘Well, I’m not exactly sure. I suppose I wouldn’t have thought you were ever going to live in a place like this.’ 

Ah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. 

Ted really isn’t the guy to chill in the sun, wearing shorts and flip flops. He’s the guy that gets pissed when the sun shines in his face, and that hates the countless tourists with their huge hats and their fucking fanny packs. 

Or, well. He was, wasn’t he? The last time he saw Charlotte, that was the kind of guy he was. And now? Who the flying fuck is he now?

He’s different, that’s for sure. And maybe two days ago, he even had an idea who that new guy was. But today, now that Charlotte is here? He doesn’t know. He has no fucking idea. 

‘Well, I guess I didn’t either,’ Ted mutters vaguely. ‘It just kinda happened. I mean, when you wanna leave Hatchetfield, you wanna go to a place that’s nothing like it, you know? That’s California, for me.’

Ted bites his tongue. Did he say too much? It would not be much of a surprise, considering that the whole reason he even is in this situation is because he said too much six years ago. Yeah, and then four years after that. He just doesn’t seem to learn from his mistake. 

‘Yeah, I understand,’ Charlotte says. ‘This really is much different from home.’ And that’s all she says for a while. 

Charlotte insists that Ted orders for her. It’s ridiculously endearing, so Ted doesn’t say no. 

She makes a very curious face when the waitress greets Ted by name, and he smiles at her in return. Ted looks away and tries to steer the conversation into a different direction, literally any direction at all, have you seen any good movies recently? Why not tell me all about the plot right now, Charlotte? Charlotte?

‘What are you looking at me like that for?’, he asks. Charlotte shakes her head, and smiles at him sweetly. ‘You come here a lot, don’t you?’ She leans back in her chair and looks around the inside of the café. ‘You’re so nice. Doesn’t sound like you.’

Ted pulls a face. ‘God, I know I was an asshole in Hatchetfield, no need to rub it in my face,’ Ted grumbles and looks away. ‘Sometimes it just pays to be the nice guy, Charlotte.’

Charlotte nods. ‘Emma would be very surprised if I told her about this.’

‘Oh, please,’ Ted says, ‘I was always nice to Emma. At least for her own standards.’

That makes Charlotte laugh. 

It sounds a lot different from the way it used to when Ted still lived in Hatchetfield. She would always laugh quietly, carefully, sometimes even cover her mouth. She’d never look at you, not even when you were the one that made her laugh. Ted would always stare at her, and hope that no one could see the small smile it put on his stupid face. 

This laugh, however, is much different. It’s like there’s a whole other person sitting in front of him. It’s loud and it’s full, she even throws her head back a little. She looks like nothing on the planet could possibly scare her. 

It doesn’t make Ted smile. Instead it actually, physically hurts. Ted looks away and tries to think of anything else. He tries to remember how it had felt to leave Hatchetfield, but he comes up empty. He knows he had all of those reasons he had to go away, but right now, looking at Charlotte, he can’t think of a single one. All he can think of is how fucking beautiful Charlotte is, and how much he’s missed her, god fucking damnit. 

Charlotte says, ‘I’m sure she would say otherwise. I remember that you never were a big friend of tipping.’ 

Ted shrugs and pulls a very uncomfortable face. ‘What was I just saying about rubbing it in my face?’ 

Charlotte simply smiles and takes a quiet sip of her coffee, and it’s very beautiful and absolutely devastating. 

They eat mostly in silence, and it gives Ted a great opportunity to stare at Charlotte a whole bunch. He probably shouldn’t, because he was just about to forget what her face looks like (yeah, that’s a fucking lie, now shut up). He should just look right inside his cup of coffee and think about all the things he loves about California, or just maybe absolutely anything, no fucking matter what at all. 

But he doesn’t. He just looks at Charlotte, and looks at Charlotte some more. 

It’s absolutely bewildering how she looks just the same in so many ways, but also completely different. He’s almost forgotten how many years have passed since he last saw her - she actually looks a little older. 

He thought about her a lot the past years, of course, because he’s a weak idiot, and for some reason he always imagined her looking exactly the same - a bow in her hair, a soft and also outrageous cat sweater, maybe a skirt, maybe a cup of coffee, and of course an unsettled expression on her face. That’s how he remembered her, but that just isn’t what she looks like now. 

His eyes get stuck on some gray streaks in her hair, which is perhaps the worst part - worse than the new confidence she carries herself with, worse than the summer clothes Ted has never seen before. Seeing them stings, in the most ridiculous way. 

Watching Charlotte grow old. Back when he was still in Hatchetfield, that was always supposed to be his thing. That was something he’d always look forward to. And now? He’s missing it. 

He looks away from Charlotte and doesn't say anything. His fingers are itching for a cigarette, but he spends the rest of their breakfast pretending that he is a somewhat healthy and responsible person. 

Ted doesn't smoke outside of his apartment, because he is a damn coward, and who knows, maybe his current friends don't actually know him. Maybe he just pretended that he stopped being an asshole, and maybe- 

Fuck. Charlotte hasn't even been here for a whole day and Ted is already doubting most of the decisions he's made the last six years. 

It was a lot of decisions, so by the time they've paid and left the tiny Café, Ted is still thinking about all of them. He feels like a twenty year-old idiot. 

Because of this, he's more than a little startled when Charlotte starts talking once they're on their way from the café to the beach. 

'You know that I divorced Sam, right?,' is what she asks. Somehow, it's the worst thing she's told him ever since she's showed up at the door to his apartment. 'Years ago,' she adds quietly. She sounds like she lost the confidence with which she blurted out the first sentence. 

Ted looks at her and can't help but smile. 'I know,' he says softly. There's no anger in his voice; Ted is too old to be angry at this point. 'I know, Paul told me.' 

'Oh.' Charlotte almost stops walking for a second. She looks at Ted. 'You knew,' she says. 'For six years?' 

Ted shrugs, then he nods. ‘I would have sent you a card, I thought about it, but I was worried you might not like that very much.’ Charlotte chuckles a little, but she’s not smiling, and she doesn’t look at Ted either. ‘I would have liked that,’ she says. ‘I think.’ 

It’s silent around them for a few seconds. Ted stares at his shoes and thinks of nothing. ‘How is Sam?’, he asks finally. 

He wonders if this might be a terrible mistake, but Charlotte doesn’t flinch and doesn’t look particularly upset by this either. Still, she isn’t smiling, but in this case it’s much more of a relief. 

‘He’s well, I suppose,’ Charlotte says. ‘He’s about to move to Clivesdale. Better job offers.’ Ted nods. ‘Are you guys… are you friends?’ Charlotte shrugs. ‘I suppose. We don’t spend much time together. But we’re not on bad terms.’ Ted frowns. ‘I see.’ 

‘You know,’ Charlotte says slowly, ‘Sam and I- we always got along well. I mean, back when we were young. We were great friends. I guess we thought it meant we would be a great couple, but, you know.’ She shrugs, looking quite unbothered. ‘We didn’t fit like that, not really. It was a mistake to get married, of course. But we didn’t know better at the time. So you know what happened. We became unhappy.’ 

She looks like she’s talking about two people she’s never met, and not about her own failed marriage. ‘Sam, started cheating, and then I-’

She falls silent, and has a long look at her hands. Ted finishes the sentence for her. ‘And then you started seeing me. To get back at him for neglecting you. Wasn’t that what happened?’ He doesn’t want to sound this bitter, but he can’t help it. He hates himself for it. 

Charlotte hums. ‘Well, I mean- maybe that’s how it started, but then- after a while-’ She catches herself on and shuts up. Ted is sure he’s just imagining the flush on her face. And he’s also imagining it meaning anything. Anything at all. He looks away. He doesn’t smile. Honestly. 

‘Well, and then I left,’ he says, quickly, so Charlotte can talk about what happened afterwards without Ted hearing what she was thinking about it at the time, and what exactly she’s thinking about it now that she’s heard the voice messages Ted sent. Charlotte nods. ‘Right.’

‘What happened next?’, he asks. 

Charlotte takes a long and deep breath before she goes on. ‘Well, we got divorced,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t easy, it took a while to convince Sam it was for the best. He didn’t want to give up, he- I don’t know what he was thinking. But eventually, he saw that we weren’t happy, and that we could potentially be happy apart.’ She almost smiles, then. ‘Lots of things changed after that, I suppose.’

‘Yeah?’ Ted has a hard time imagining what she means. ‘What happened? Did Sam have a realisation and changed into a great person?’ God, he sounds like an asshole. But he really is curious. 

Charlotte chuckles. She still seems to be used to Ted being- well, like that. ‘I don’t know if I would say it like that, no,’ she says, ‘but, you know. It’s been a long time. A lot of things can change in six years.’ She has a look at Ted from the side as she echoes his words. ‘And you can learn a lot of things.’ She shrugs. ‘We both made lots of mistakes in our marriage, you know. Making mistakes- it makes it a little easier to forgive, maybe. But there’s still- I don’t think we can really be friends. But that’s alright.’

She look away from Ted and falls silent, and Ted doesn’t ask anything else on the subject. 

Over the years, Ted has developed a certain fondness for living in California. Still, there’s enough parts of him that are still home in a cold state like Michigan, so the beach isn’t his favorite place in the world. He’s a coward, bringing Charlotte here of all places, but fuck it, she doesn’t need to know that he’s trying to make it easy for himself. 

And karma is there to punish Ted anyway, because Charlotte’s face lights up as soon as she sees the water, and it makes Ted’s knees go weak. 

Fuck, she’s so pretty. Ted forgot what it felt like to make her smile. This really, really isn’t fair. 

‘Oh, Ted,’ Charlotte says and takes his hand. Ted almost pulls away but catches himself on on time. ‘That’s so beautiful.’ 

‘Yeah.’ Charlotte looks over to where the sun is hitting the waves. ‘It is.’ Ted looks right at Charlotte. He’s sure it doesn’t show. He’s sure he’s not going to get into trouble for any of this. He’s also sure, very sure, that he’s full of shit. But he smiles anyway. 

‘Do you come here often?’, Charlotte asks. Her smile has turned teasing, which is something Ted doesn’t think he’s ever seen. It’s baffling, to discover new things about Charlotte. New smiles or frowns, new expressions on her face, maybe even new words he’s never heard before. 

Wasn’t it bad enough that she’s gotten older? Must she also be different, and, god fucking damnit, bolder? 

‘Isn’t that what people do in California?’, she goes on. ‘Go to the beach, drink cocktails, wear shorts and surf?’ Ted scoffs. ‘Please, Charlotte,’ he says, ‘I’m a serious man. I only wear shorts on the weekends.’

That makes Charlotte laugh, and for a moment, Ted feels like the luckiest asshole on this beach. Charlotte squeezes his hand, and the feeling is gone. ‘Let’s get closer.’ 

Charlotte walks all the way to the water. This is where Ted stops and lets her walk the rest on her own. 

They spend a long while there, standing in silence at the beach. The water is just touching Charlotte’s feet, and Ted is a few steps behind her. He can stare at her in peace like this, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t. 

Charlotte is very quiet for these moments. Ted can’t help but think that this might be the quiet before the storm. 

But things have been alright so far. Maybe Ted is just a bitch, and maybe he just needs to relax. He does like Charlotte, after all. Sure, that’s exactly what got him into this trouble in the first place, but maybe it’s enough to get him out again. 

Fuck, he really missed Charlotte. He’s missed her company. And she’s only going to be here for a few more days. What the fuck is he thinking, wasting this time? He should just have fun with Charlotte, and try not to ruin this again. And maybe make her laugh as often as he can. 

He doesn’t notice Charlotte has turned around and is staring at him for a few more seconds. She smiles when Ted notices, squinting against the sun. ‘What are you thinking about?’, she asks. Ted pulls a face, and she laughs. 

Score. 

‘Oh, you know,’ he says. ‘The usual.’ 

Charlotte raises one eyebrow. ‘The usual?’, she asks. ‘Oh dear. Please forget I asked.’ 

Ted snorts. ‘Oh come on.’ He crosses his arms in front of his chest. ‘That isn’t fair. I could be thinking about the true secrets of the universe. You don’t know what my usual is these days.’ 

Charlotte hums. Then she shakes her head. ‘No, no,’ she says with a smirk. ‘I think I know.’ 

Ted thinks she probably does. And it doesn’t make him want to hide or run or get defensive. 

Ted isn’t sure why, but things end up being a little easier after that. It’s starting to be less and less surreal, to see someone like Charlotte in a place like this. And it’s starting to be less and less painful, to look at her and to hear her voice. 

It’s just Charlotte, after all. It’s nothing Ted has never dealt with before. 

‘Well?, Charlotte asks him after that. ‘Where to next?’ 

And this is also the moment Ted gives up on making plans, or being careful not to get too close. He just takes Charlotte wherever she wants to go, and it’s easy. 

Ted enjoys it as long as it lasts. 

Charlotte decides she wants ice cream and it makes Ted really laugh. 

‘What’s so funny?’, she asks with a disgruntled voice. Ted just shrugs. ‘It’s nothing, really,’ he says. ‘I just always used to think ice cream was something people grew out of.’ 

‘Oh, please.’ Charlotte crosses her arms in front of her chest. ‘If you take me to a place with this kind of weather with this many tourists, I’m gonna have the same fun that they do. And I’m _gonna_ get my ice cream.’ 

Ted shakes his head, but he can’t hide the smile on his face. He’s just going to pretend that he wouldn’t buy Charlotte absolutely everything or do anything to get her to laugh again. 

Some things just don’t change, and even though Hatchetfield Ted would just cross his arms and shut his mouth, California Ted doesn’t have as much trouble just being nice. 

Charlotte seems to notice it, too, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Ted just buys her the ice cream and smiles like a stupid idiot, and he doesn’t wonder or worry if maybe, he’s more of a lovesick idiot. 

Every time he looks at Charlotte, not thinking about that gets more and more difficult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!


	3. Chapter 3

Charlotte had thought about Ted for a long time, on her way to California. She had imagined all kinds of new faces for him. She had thought of a thousand ways he could be different than he is now, wondered and wondered. She even questioned if he was going to recognise her after all the years they spent apart. 

The one thing she didn’t expect was to see Ted carrying himself, well- differently. Ted always used to walk in a way that Charlotte only saw with Ted. It wasn’t exactly like he was carrying things that are very heavy for a very long time, but it did come close, in a way. He doesn’t move that way anymore. 

The steps he takes now are lighter, somehow, and even though more than half a decade have passed since the last time Charlotte has seen him, he almost looks younger. When he smiles he does it more brightly, and when Charlotte looks at him she doesn’t feel like there’s something he’s hiding.

Ted probably doesn’t even notice the change himself, but there’s no doubt that it’s there.

It makes Charlotte feel uneasy, somehow, for a reason she cannot quite name. 

She thinks about the feeling every time she looks at Ted, but she doesn’t come to any conclusion that’s satisfying, so she just keeps looking at him. 

Because it is nice after all, to look at him, even though it feels a little unfamiliar for her and she doesn’t understand why. 

Even when Charlotte was still afraid or reluctant to admit it, those many years ago, Charlotte would always feel safe with Ted. There was barely any reluctance in her smiles and laughs when she was with Ted. That feeling hasn’t changed, no matter how different Ted looks now.

Whatever Ted was before, Charlotte feels good about the thought of having a friend in him now. A friend that she has been through a lot with, sure, and maybe even a friend that things didn’t end well with (or maybe rather not at all), but a friend still. Charlotte ignores the vague uneasy feeling this thought gives her, as well. 

‘Can I ask you something?’, she says after tossing the question around in her head for a while. They’re back in Ted’s apartment on the couch. Ted made coffee and sat Charlotte down, with an expression on his face that very clearly said he wasn’t sure what to do next, which seems to be something Ted shares with her. 

Ted clears his throat, blinks a few times. He looks like he’s just waking up from a deep sleep. ‘Uh,’ he says, and Charlotte cannot help but smile, ‘Sure. What’s up?’

‘I was just thinking about something.’ Charlotte is fidgeting around with the hem of her shirt, looking down. For a second, she wonders if she should have asked this question outside. She could have been wearing the sunglasses. It might have been easier. 

She shakes her head. She’s overthinking this. 

‘Do you ever miss it?,’ Charlotte blurts out. 

Oh. See? There you go. Wasn’t difficult at all. Don’t know why you were worrying about this for so long. 

‘Miss what? What do you mean?’ 

Charlotte has a feeling Ted knows what she means, but she answers anyway. ‘Hatchetfield. Do you ever miss it?’

‘Oof,’ Ted says, looking away. ‘I don’t know. That’s not an easy question, Charlotte.’ 

Charlotte frowns. She doesn’t ask, _why not_. She also doesn’t want to. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. Ted doesn’t seem to notice. He goes on. 

‘I suppose I-’ He stops himself, thinks for a moment. 

‘I miss some things about it, you know?’ His voice is low, like he’s scared of someone hearing him. It confuses Charlotte, but she doesn’t ask. 

‘I miss Paul.’ He scoffs, but there’s a smile. ‘I miss Bill, too, I guess. Hell, even the baristas at Beanie’s. I miss Emma. I miss the lake, I miss the fucking clouds - tell you what, it took me a long time to get used to the sun shining all damn day around here. I miss- I miss lots of things.’ 

There’s a beat. Ted is quiet for a few moments. 

Charlotte is just starting to believe that he’s done answering this question when he says, ‘I miss you.’

Oh. This Charlotte did not expect. 

Ted looks a little sheepish. Charlotte beaming at him does not exactly make it better. 

Well, why didn’t she expect it? It’s not like Charlotte didn’t hear every single one of the voice messages. That’s the whole reason why she’s here, isn't it? Even though she hasn’t said anything about it to Ted yet, and maybe won’t at all. Still, hearing him say this- it’s odd, if that’s the right word to describe it. It feels like a tiny candle lit up right beneath her heart. 

It’s warm. It’s very unfamiliar. It’s also very, very nice. 

‘Me? You do?’ Charlotte looks at him with a tiny smile. Ted crosses his arms in front of his chest. He looks defensive, and it’s almost scary. But it’s Ted, so all it does is make Charlotte smile a bigger smile. Ted just frowns at that. 

‘Yes, you, come on,’ he snaps. ‘What else did you think I was gonna do, forget you? Find someone else like you? Do you have any idea how fucking unique you are, Charlotte? It’s not like I didn’t try. I felt bad about it, but yeah, I did try. It’s fucking impossible. No one is like you.’

‘Oh,’ Charlotte says. And then nothing else for a short while. She tries to make a harmless expression, one that doesn’t tell Ted anything. But that’s not something Charlotte has ever been good at. 

'I'm sorry to hear that,' is the answer she eventually settles on. It's not the right thing to say in this context, she knows that herself. But even though it's answered by a dismissive, 'whatever,' it does put a short-lived smile on Ted's face. Maybe that's better than nothing. 

And Charlotte is sorry. At least a small part of her. Mainly she feels guilty about how relieved a bigger part of her is to hear this - but she can ignore that conflict for now. 

'And Ted,' Charlotte adds, 'I've missed- I miss you too. Of course I do.' 

Ted doesn't look at her when she says it. Charlotte, on the other hand, is watching him intently. She isn't sure what she's expecting or what she wants, herself. She supposes she just wants a reaction, maybe any reaction, just- 

She doesn't get it. Instead Ted blinks at her with very tired eyes and says, 'Do you think we might be doing this wrong, Charlotte?' 

Charlotte simply shrugs, without thinking about it much. She thinks that her and Ted have been doing this whole thing wrong for quite a while, even before Ted had left Hatchetfield and they had not seen each other for years. Most of the mistakes made had been Charlotte's. 

And now? Is there really anything left that they even could be doing wrong? 

'I don't know,' she says, 'I feel like there aren't really any rules for this situation, you know? Not that we ever followed any, even when they still existed.' 

Ted snorts. There it is. A reaction. It isn't what Charlotte had hoped, but maybe that is alright, and maybe that is also enough. 

Charlotte had never wondered wether or not Ted was enough. Of course, she'd never wondered that about Sam, either. 

The difference was that when she was with Ted, she'd never wonder if _she_ was enough, not even once. 

Not until Ted left, at least. Now that those years are over and she's here, even if only for a few days, she is trying to find an answer. 

Ted is right. They're not doing this right. 

If Charlotte were to do this right, she would have asked Ted about the messages right away, before he could make her dinner and remind her of all the different things he's missed about him. 

She'd have told him why she was actually here. 

Just maybe, she would have pushed him up against the wall of his living room and kissed him, and yes, maybe Ted would have kissed her back, and none of this would be necessary.

She wouldn't have been lying on Ted's couch and staring at the ceiling for the entire night. 

Things could have been simple. Disappointing, maybe, if Ted had pushed her away, but still simple enough. 

Enough. 

Enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough. 

'So what now?', Ted asks. 'We just keep doing- whatever the fuck it is we're doing?' 

'I don't know,' Charlotte says. 'Maybe.' 

Maybe that could be enough. Charlotte doesn't think so. But she does hope so. 

‘I mean, I like it.’ She says it with a casual voice. She’s really gotten better at lying. She thinks Ted might have gotten worse, but she isn’t sure yet. She keeps her eyes on Ted, and yes, the look on his face is different from the one she is used to. 

‘What do you mean?’, Ted asks. For a very short moment, he looks at her in a way she’s never seen before. He looks at her like- like- 

Charlotte stops the train of thought right there. She thinks this might have been the look on Ted’s face when he closed the door as soon as she told him what brought her here. Before she can come to any other conclusion, Ted catches himself and the look is gone. 

‘Well, this,’ Charlotte says simply. She gestures to the room, to Ted on his couch, and Charlotte right next to him. There’s two cups of tea on the couch table in front of them. It’s quiet. 

‘I just said that I missed you,’ she goes on, ‘I missed spending time with you. Just this- just us, right here. You and me. It’s nice. It’s simple.’ Charlotte smiles. ‘I like it.’ 

Ted hums thoughtfully. ‘I guess I didn’t see it like that.’ He takes his cup in his hands and takes a sip. ‘That sounds nice, though.’

He sounds- he sounds different. He speaks with the voice of a man who’s made a habit of letting things go. 

Charlotte isn’t sure why this keeps making her so uneasy. 

‘Maybe that is what it is,’ she mutters. She looks down into her mug and bites her lip. ‘Maybe you’re right, and we did do this wrong the years before. Maybe this- maybe this is what we were supposed to be, from the start. Maybe we were always meant to be friends.’ 

The words fall into the room like something very heavy. They fill up everything and for a while, it feels like they’re filling up the space between the two of them like very thick and very heavy air, filling Charlotte’s lungs and leaving no space for anything else. It’s quiet around them. 

Charlotte finds herself wondering if this is what regret feels like. _Maybe we were always meant to be friends._ Maybe they were always meant to be friends. Charlotte isn’t sure if she means it, or if she’s saying it to- to avoid saying other things, maybe. Maybe Charlotte is a coward. 

Ted doesn’t say anything for a while. He takes a sip of his tea, and then another one, and he keeps quiet and Charlotte wonders and wonders if this is what regret feels like. Eventually, Ted makes a noise that’s probably intended as some kind of a scoff, or something else that’s casual and, well. Very much like this new Ted. 

‘Who knows,’ Ted says noncommittally and without looking at Charlotte. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we did miss a real good opportunity back in the day.’ 

_But we’re here now,_ Charlotte says, but she doesn’t say it. 

The day ends with mostly silence. Charlotte and Ted don’t talk very much. They sit and Charlotte tries to look anywhere else but Ted’s face. 

She doesn’t sleep very well that night. She’s starting to think she’s going to be very tired once she makes it home. Hopefully in Hatchetfield, she’s going to be able to sleep without constantly thinking of Ted. 

The next day, Charlotte and Ted are walking through the town. It’s the morning, but it’s already hotter than any Hatchetfield summer day that Charlotte can remember. 

Charlotte squints into the sun and wonders how Ted survives these kinds of sunshine. 

She’s wearing a white summer dress that she doesn’t think she’s worn since she’s bought it. She’s even wearing a summer hat. It even surprised Ted. Or well, that’s the only reason Charlotte can think of why he would look at her the way he did for this long. Charlotte doesn’t mention it. 

‘Oh shit,’ Ted mutters after a few minutes of silent walking. He raises his hand to wave and a lopsided grin appears on his face. 

Charlotte frowns, and follows his eyes. There’s someone else waving back at him. Charlotte tries a careful smile. They walk towards the woman Ted waved at. 

‘Well, this is going to be big fun,’ Ted says, and then something strange happens with his face. 

He smiles. It’s not a smile Charlotte has really seen before. It’s- it’s-

It’s earnest. It’s not sarcastic or trying to conceal something. It’s just a smile. 

It makes Charlotte stop dead in her tracks. Ted almost leaves her where she stops, but she manages to collect herself and follow him. She does not take her eyes off him once they’re meeting the woman Ted seems to know. She suddenly feels sheepish and childish, and she tries to smile very carefully. 

‘Hey, Ted,’ the woman greets him. She’s smiling. She has a very nice face. She looks pretty. Charlotte looks at the way Ted smiles back. She’s feeling very, very displaced. She tries to shake the feeling off and tells herself she’s foolish for feeling like this. It does not work. 

‘Hey, Claire, what’s up?’ Ted grins and then Charlotte has a longer look at him. His relaxed shoulders. His colorful shirt. His easy smile. For this moment, he looks like a completely different person. Charlotte wonders if maybe she was not supposed to see this. 

‘Oh Charlotte,’ Ted catches himself and turns to her, ‘this is Claire. She’s- we’re working together.’ 

‘Oh, I see,’ Charlotte says. ‘That’s nice.’ She takes Claire’s offered hand and they shake. 

‘Claire, this is Charlotte, she’s- she’s my- we-’ Ted interrupts himself and shakes his head. He freezes for a moment. 

‘I’m an old friend,’ Charlotte comes to his help. Ted looks relieved, but there’s also something else on his face, something that almost looks like… disappointment?

No, that can’t be it. 

‘Right,’ Ted says. ‘She’s come to visit me for a while. We were coworkers back in Hatchetfield.’

Hatchetfield?

Claire nods, there's no question on her face. She looks like she's heard this name a billion times before. 

Ted must have told her about it. Ted must have told her about where he comes from. The thought seems very strange to Charlotte. 

'That's great,' Claire says and smiles at Charlotte. 'Nice to meet you!' 

Charlotte can't find anything wrong in her smile. Why is she looking for something wrong, anyway? She smiles back. 

'What have you guys been up to?', Claire asks, and Charlotte grants herself a selfish second in which she wishes Ted would just look a little uncomfortable. 

He doesn't do her the favor. He looks relaxed and happy to see his coworker. 

He didn't look at her like that when she appeared in his doorway. 

Charlotte blinks a few times. Maybe she shouldn't have come. 

'Oh, you know, not much,' Ted says with a casual shrug. 'We've just been around, I showed Charlotte the city, you know, the usual. The beach.' 

Claire grins. 'Oh, you showed her the beach? Oh, you're very lucky,' she says to Charlotte. 'Nothing is harder than getting this guy to have some damn fun on the beach for once.' 

Ted grins sheepishly, but it's still an easy grin. 'I swear to god, shut up, Claire.' 

It's nice. Ted is nice. Claire is also nice. Charlotte wishes she could just enjoy this the way she is supposed to, like a good friend would. 

Instead she rolls her shoulders and tries another smile. 

‘You didn’t tell them about me,’ Charlotte says once they’ve said goodbye and Claire is out of sight. 

Ted shrugs, but he's avoiding Charlotte's eyes. 'You know,' he says vaguely, 'this is not the kind of friendship this is. Not the kind I have,' he adds quietly, and does he sound a little bitter? 

Or is that just what Charlotte wants to hear? 

'But you're-' Charlotte falls silent, wonders how to say this and if she should say it at all. 

'What?', Ted asks. He sounds like he's trying to sound casual and only half-interested. It doesn't work, or maybe Charlotte would just like to imagine it. 

'I just mean, you're nice. You're all there. You smile, you hold eye-contact, you- you told them where you come from. They- they know things about you. They're happy to see you. _You're_ happy to see them.' 

She wishes she didn't sound defensive. She feels like a child. 

_Why do you feel happy without me, Ted. Why didn't you spend the last six years waiting for me. How could you build yourself a whole new life while I was- while I was-_

_While I was just thinking about you._

Ted puts his hands into his pockets (something she hasn't seen him do the past couple days, but something he would do a lot back in Hatchetfield, and why is she thinking about this now?), and pulls up his shoulders. 

'Well,' he says, 'a lot can happen in six years. Not everything is the same.' 

He's right. He _is_ different. He has changed. 

But Charlotte hasn't. She's still the same. 

'I guess so,' Charlotte mutters, and that's all she says for a while. 

She looks at Ted a lot for the rest of the day. He shows her buildings and parks and little shops and Charlotte nods along to all of it, but she's looking at Ted. 

She thinks she's starting to understand why this visit has been making her so uneasy. 

Charlotte came here knowing nothing about this new Ted and his new home except the things she’s heard in the voice messages. But the last one was… a while ago, and Charlotte was foolish, clearly. She definitely knew this beforehand, but still. When she got on the bus leaving Hatchetfield she was prepared to drive to a Ted that’s lonely and frustrated and unsure of his decisions and- and- 

And in love with her. Wasn’t that what had brought her here in the first place?

But this isn’t the Ted that would get drunk and call her phone never expecting her to answer. 

This is the Ted that stopped. 

He lost her, sure, but he also let go of her. And he’d sound unhappy on the messages but now… he’s just a man living in a city. With a job and with friends and with colorful shirts. And he smiles and holds eye contact and he’s not hostile at all and he- 

He’s happy. He wasn’t waiting for Charlotte. He’s moved on. 

And Charlotte got on a bus immediately to what, confess her undying love for him six years too late?

Charlotte bites her lip and finally looks away from Ted. It was a mistake, coming here. All it did is rip open old wounds for Ted and give her foolish hopes that she should have given up on many years ago. 

Charlotte should go. 

She knows that it would be the right thing to leave Ted alone, but she decides to at least stay until the end of the week and simply be Ted’s old friend until then. 

It’s an entirely selfish decision.

The next time Ted looks at Charlotte, she smiles at him as widely as she can manage. The questioning look on his face disappears very quickly, and he carefully smiles back. 

Oh, dear. He’s very beautiful. Charlotte really is quite in love with him. 

‘Do you-,’ Ted says, and stops to think for a moment. Then, he grins. 

‘Do you want a drink?’ 

Charlotte says yes. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it folks. thanks so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed my self-indulgent mess <3

The sun has just gone down on Ted’s living room, and he was just thinking that it’s been a long time since he’s heard Charlotte laugh like this. Right now, he’s thinking that he actually doesn’t remember a single time in Hatchetfield he’s heard her laugh like that at all. Not once. 

It’s a weirdly sobering thought, and at least Ted is not too drunk to realise that. He is too drunk, however, to actually sober up. All he manages is to stare at Charlotte laughing at something Ted said that he’s already forgotten. 

He really, really wants to kiss her. But that would not be smart. 

Ted isn’t smart at all, not even when he’s sober, but he still doesn’t kiss her. He just stares at her lips until she’s done laughing and starts looking at him instead. Her eyes are looking a little glazed. They’re both going to wake up with a killer headache tomorrow. 

‘He did not really say that to you!’, Charlotte says. Ted blinks. It takes him a moment to realise that she’s talking to him, and what she’s talking about, and that she expects an answer. 

He manages to get his head in order (or, you know, shove the whole mess under the bed in his head instead of- oh yeah, he’s getting distracted again, isn’t he) and puts on a grin that’s less whipped and more shit-eating. Just how Ted likes it. He leans back.

‘Oh, you bet he did,’ Ted says, trying not to slur the words like he’s- ah, like he’s drunk. Whatever. ‘Didn’t even realise anything was wrong with it until he saw the look on my damn face. Even then, it took a few moments for him to finally get it.’

Ted puts his head back to look at the ceiling and it hits the couch. It’s just now that he realises that they’re not even sitting on it anymore. They somehow ended up on the living room floor between the couch table and the actual couch, backs leaning against it. 

Ted shivers when he thinks of the hangover that’s waiting for him right now. But he forgets it right away when Charlotte laughs again. 

‘I can imagine that really well. I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with telling us all of these things. One would think if he loves his wife so much he could just tell her instead.’

Ted shrugs. It’s not an easy undertaking. ‘He just wants to brag, I assume,’ he suggests. ‘I mean, he does work in an office full of single people, for the most part. He knows it would hurt us the most.’

Charlotte snorts. ‘I’m sure that’s not what he wants.’

Ted makes a doubting sound. ‘I don’t know, Charlotte,’ he says, ‘I feel like there’s a certain kind of mischief in Davidson, you know? Who knows.’ He takes another sip and grimaces. ‘Maybe it’s even evil. I can’t really put my finger on it. He’s just so hard to read, you know?’

Charlotte shrugs. ‘He’s a man, Ted,’ she slurs with a cocky grin. ‘What is there to read, really?’ Ted throws his head back and laughs at the casual confidence in Charlotte’s voice.

‘Charlotte, come on,’ he whines, ‘that’s sexist, and you know it.’ Charlotte just shrugs. ‘I’ve met plenty of men. I can afford to be a little sexist.’ But then she laughs at herself. ‘God, when did I get so drunk? I swear I was sober just a minute ago. Don’t you remember me being sober? Something’s just not right here.’ Ted snorts. ‘Sure, I suppose you were. Were you?’

He’d probably be embarrassed by the bullshit he’s muttering, if he wasn’t so drunk. And, well. If Charlotte wasn’t in the same state. It’s been a while, since they’ve been talking this easily. It’s almost a little sad, that Ted needed to do this in order to put his dumb feelings aside and simply have proper fucking fun with Charlotte, like she deserves. He wishes he wasn’t such a damn coward, but those are probably thoughts for a Ted that’s much more sober. 

‘I don’t remember anymore,’ Charlotte says with a cheerful shrug. ‘The past is the past, Ted.’

Ted snorts. ‘The past’s the past,’ he slurs, and nods. ‘Yeah, I’ll fucking drink to that.’ He raises his bottle to his lips and realises that it’s empty. Charlotte chuckles. ‘God, Charlotte,’ Ted says, ‘we may have really overdone it.’

Charlotte mumbles something in response that Ted doesn’t understand but decides he agrees with it. 

_The past is the past, Ted._ He’s too tired to overthink this statement, but he has the uncomfortable feeling that he’s going to go wild with it in the morning. 

But not right now. Fuck no. Right now, tonight, he’s just the right amound of drunk to be stupid enough to rest his head on Charlotte’s shoulder. Charlotte is drunk enough to sneak her arm around his waist and to pull him closer. Ted has his eyes closed when he reaches out for Charlotte’s other arm and takes her hand. She squeezes it tightly, and for a tiny second, it feels very heavy. The moment is over really quickly, and now Charlotte is drawing tiny circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. Yeah. This is a huge mistake. Ted can feel it very clearly. He remembers that feeling really well, too. From a long time ago. 

It’s the same feeling he had the first time Charlotte had invited him to her house to spend the night. 

God, it feels like an entire fucking eternity ago. The people that made that mistake back then are not the same people that are sitting here right now. Ted isn’t sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. 

'I wonder what Paul would say, if he could see us now,' Ted mutters. 'He'd probably double right over, not sure from what exactly, though.' 

He grins to himself, then frowns, when she doesn't answer. 

'Charlotte?' He has a look at her and has to surpress a snort. 

She's fallen asleep. Still leaning against him, eyes closed, with a serene and content expression on her face. 

Ted runs his hand over her hair, that's already greying ever so slightly in some places. She's very beautiful. He loves her more in this moment than he's ever loved anyone before. 

He finds himself wishing, with a scary intensity, that he could spend every single night like this; laughing with her, talking about nothing, watching her fall asleep. 

It's a fucking blessing to be here right now, and Ted knows it's more than he deserves. 

Ted is just wondering if he will remember any of this in the morning when he falls asleep himself, right here on the living room floor in front of his couch, drunk and incredibly, ridiculously happy. 

Ted wakes up with a lethal fucking headache and some very soft and gentle fingers in his hair. 

'Are you awake?', someone asks him. Ted, eyes still closed, wonders who it might be. Maybe he's late for work and Claire has done what she always used to threaten and broken into his apartment to drag him to work if necessary.

Ted mumbles something he doesn't even understand himself and tries to turn to the other side of the bed. 

Even then, it takes him a very long time to realise that he is not, in fact, tucked into his bed, and that it’s not Claire waking him with a very gentle voice. 

His eyes open right then. He looks up, and sees Charlotte. 

She’s smiling at him. Ted mumbles something else he doesn’t understand. 

God, she looks beautiful. There’s no way she’s not at least a little hungover if not on a level similar to his, which is somewhere between very uncomfortable and fucking severe on the scale, but she still looks so beautiful. It makes Ted irrationally angry for a moment. Then, he smiles back. 

‘There you are,’ Charlotte says. ‘Did you sleep well?’

Ted sits upright, and notices a mean pain in his neck. He rubs it with a frown, but nods at Charlotte. ‘I’m way too old to ever, ever do something like this again, but yeah. Really well, actually.’ 

Charlotte grins. ‘Me too.’ She hands him a mug of steaming coffee. 

Ted makes a noise at the sight of it that he isn’t proud of. ‘Jesus fuck,’ he mumbles, ‘you’re a fucking angel.’ He takes a sip of the coffee; it’s perfect. He has a feeling Charlotte could have given him a mug of boiling hot rainwater and it still would have been fucking perfect. 

Charlotte sits down next to him with her own mug in her hand. ‘How long have you been awake?’, Ted asks. She shrugs. ‘I didn’t look at the clock,’ she says, ‘twenty minutes, maybe?’

A stupid lopsided smile forms on Ted’s face. ‘So you woke up and went straight to making me a coffee?’ Charlotte grins. God, these grins are so new. Charlotte used to be so timid and careful with her smiles. She never used to smile from ear to ear, or throw her head back in laughter like she does now. It’s so, so different. And she’s so beautiful. It’s not fair that Ted has to sit here, hungover and miserable in his lonely California existence, while Charlotte is sitting next to him looking like that, making jokes and grinning at him and just. Being so different, and so much like Charlotte. Ted is just about to think he wishes she wouldn’t have come, but then Charlotte says, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I had to make and drink two mugs for myself before I could think about any other human being in my direct vicinity first. My bad, Ted.’ 

Ted laughs at that, out loud, and it splits his aching head in two, but it’s fucking worth it. Charlotte follows the movement of his head, and her eyes look like they’re glowing. In this moment, Ted is tired as fuck, and his head hurts very much, and he’s so, so in love with Charlotte. 

‘Then I guess I should be grateful for getting coffee at all, huh?’ Ted nudges Charlotte with his elbow, and she nods with a smile. ‘Exactly.’

Ted blames his hungover mind for what he does next. He’s sure it’s not true, but he has to claim some reason other than his stupid feelings for putting his mug down on the floor, grapsing Charlotte’s hands with his in a dramatic manner, pulling them to his face and saying, ‘Oh Charlotte, saviour of my alcohol-dried-up brain, how will I ever repay you for this beautiful drink of the living?’ 

Charlotte laughs, and is there a tiny splash of colour on her face?

Back when they were- back when Ted still used to live in Hatchetfield, Charlotte would never, ever blush. Now, she’s-

Jesus, why does Ted keep thinking about that? Charlotte is going to go home in two days, and fuck, Ted is happy about it. He’s relieved. He’s _not_ constantly looking for excuses to make her stay longer. That would be stupid. And Ted isn’t stupid. Not anymore, at least. 

‘So,’ Charlotte says once Ted is halfway through his coffee. ‘What’s the plan for today? Where are we going?’

Ted groans into his mug. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘You can’t make me leave the apartment today. Have you looked at me? I’m a fucking wreck.’ He looks at Charlotte. ‘I don’t know how you manage to look so goddamn pretty even after the amount of alcohol we had last night, but I’m not so lucky, and believe me, the outside definitely reflects the inside here. If you make me go out into the sun I’m gonna pull a wicked witch of the west and melt right there on the sidewalk.’ 

Charlotte grins and shakes her head. ‘The wicked witch of the west doesn’t melt in the sunlight, Ted.’ She leans back against the couch. ‘But sure, I’m okay with staying in for a while.’ She looks out of the window. ‘It is really weird here. Does the sun ever stop shining?’

Ted snorts. ‘Believe me, when I first got here, I fucking hated it. Your eyes eventually adjust.’

Well. They adjust when you stay longer. Charlotte, on the other hand, is going to leave in two days. Which is not a bad thing, Ted. Shut your damn mouth. 

‘I’m gonna believe that when I see it,’ Charlotte mutters. ‘Can you reach the remote?’

Ted turns on the television, and then that’s the entire morning. Every once in a while one of the two forces themselves to their feet to get something vaguely edible from the kitchen. 

‘So,’ Ted says, unfortunately in the middle of chewing, ‘I’ve been thinking.’ 

It’s the early-to-mid afternoon, or something. Ted hasn’t really looked at the clock and there haven’t been any news to zap away from in a while, so he has now idea what time it actually is. Which feels good, sort of. But probably only because Charlotte is there. 

‘Oh,’ Charlotte says. Ted’s head whips around quickly enough to get his neck to complain very loudly once again at her tone. 

‘Oh no,’ she says. She puts a hand on Ted’s forehead and makes a worried face. ‘I told you you should stop with things like that! Are you sure you’re okay?’

Ted pulls a face and grabs Charlotte’s hand to pull it away from his face. ‘Come on, don’t make fun of me. I’m trying real hard here.’ He can’t quite stifle the grin. 

Charlotte has another stupid concerned look at him before the smile finally breaks open on her face. ‘Okay, okay, fine, go ahead. Put yourself in danger.’ She leans back against the couch and looks at the television. ‘What were you thinking about, then?’ 

‘Well,’ Ted says, now feeling a little sheepish. ‘You know what day it is tomorrow, right?’

Charlotte hums. ‘Thursday.’ 

Ted rolls his eyes. ‘You _know_ that’s not what I mean, Charlotte.’ 

He stares at the screen for a while. And when he actually says what he was thinking about, he’s slurring like he’s still drunk, and not, you know. Very much of a coward. 

'Would you like to look at the fireworks with me?' 

Charlotte frowns. 'Sorry,' she says, 'what did you say?' 

Well, Ted, there you have it. Now say it again, slowly, like a normal person, and don't be this fucking scared, for god's sake. 

Ted clears his throat. 'Would you,' he says to the empty mug he put down on the carpet next to him, 'like to watch the fireworks. With me. Tomorrow.' He makes a weak gesture towards nothing. 

'Oh,' Charlotte says. There's a smile on her face that Ted can't see because he's a coward. 'That's tomorrow? Already? The-' 

'Fourth of July, yeah.' Ted is just about to go into reverse and try to change the subject when Charlotte laughs. 

'I didn't know that was something you liked to do.' 

'Oh, well, it isn't,' Ted says quickly. 'Not usually, at least. But they're really nice around here. They have this thing going on at the beach - shame to miss it, really.' He looks at Charlotte and tries not to look too much in love. 'Thought you might like to see it. You know, before you leave again.'

The smile on Charlotte's face falters, but it doesn't disappear. She's still so good at keeping secrets, Ted can tell. He has no idea what she's thinking right now. He never really did. 

'Right,' she says slowly. 'Right, of course. That sounds nice, Ted.' 

Ted lets out a sigh that's way too relieved for his own tastes. He leans back and nods. 'Nice,' he says. And that's that. 

He doesn't realise how big of a mistake this is until a while later.

The day ends as quietly as it's started, and sometime around seven in the afternoon both Ted and Charlotte realise that they have to deal with the fact that they spent the entire day, well… sitting in front of the couch and watching television. 

'I mean, at least my hangover has gotten well enough,' Ted mutters. Charlotte agrees with a hum. She looks out the window where it's slowly getting dark. 

'I didn't think I'd say this, but,' she moves her neck in one direction, then the other, 'this was nice. Haven't done anything like this in… a while, I think.' 

Ted snorts. 'Believe it or not, neither have I.' He gets up to his feet for the first time in hours. 'I'm not a fucking teenager anymore, either.' He yawns, then looks down at Charlotte. 'Do you want something to drink?' 

Charlotte snorts. 'What, now that I'm just starting to feel better? You're going to do this to me again?' 

'Oh, come on, that's not what I mean.' Ted raises his hands defensively. 'I mean, like, fuck- a tea, or a glass of water, or whatever.' 

Charlotte grins. 'You have tea in your house? _You_? You mean iced tea, right? With tons of sugar?'

Ted pulls a face. 'Come on, that's not fair,' he complains. 'I _might_ be an eternal sexy bachelor living in an awesome California mansion, but that doesn't mean I only have booze in my house, or that I don't know how to have a deep, emotional conversation.' 

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. Charlotte just laughs. 

‘Fine, fine,’ she says with a smile, ‘get the tea and then you can tell me what you think about Schroedinger’s cat, how about that?’ 

Ted scoffs. ‘Oh please, that’s easy,’ he says, not actually having any idea if it is, ‘the cat is clearly dead.’ He turns around and walks to the kitchen. He can hear Charlotte call behind him, ‘Ted, the cat is neither alive nor dead, that’s the whole point of it!’

‘Oh, to hell with the cat,’ Ted mutters under his breath. When he’s preparing the tea, he wonders when this is about to go wrong in some way. 

Because, as unfortunate as it is for him, he’s feeling really good. He remembers that feeling, from back when he was still living in Hatchetfield and he would see Charlotte almost every day. It was almost never a good sign. Ted would almost never get to simply love Charlotte in an innocent and easy way for long. 

Now, though, he hasn’t seen Charlotte in six years. And she’s divorced. And he’s still not allowed to actually love her at all. 

Well, that’s fucking fun. 

‘You better not have fallen asleep on me again,’ Ted says when he comes back with two steaming cups. 

Charlotte has finally taken on sitting on the actual couch for a change. She shrugs. ‘I can only stay awake through so much, Ted.’

Ted snorts. ‘Jesus christ,’ he complains, sitting down next to her. ‘When did you become so witty? I feel like I’m getting constant whiplash here.’

Charlotte simply shrugs. ‘It’s not my fault you’ve gone soft.’

Hmm. She’s kinda wrong about that, isn’t she? Ted isn’t going to throw around any blame or whatever, but there definitely is a reason he’s gone soft. And it might just be sitting on the couch right next to him. 

‘Gotten soft,’ Ted mutters with a deep frown. ‘No one has insulted me like that in years.’

Charlotte smiles. ‘Just drink your tea, Ted.’

Ted does, and then they go to sleep, and Ted tries his best to not think of any of the things that happened and that he had inside him and tried to purge from his chest six years ago. 

One more day. That’s all he has. He has one day left. And he can’t tell if he’s relieved or disappointed. He can’t tell if he’s going to be able to keep his composure. The only reason he left in the first place was because he… got soft. And then couldn’t get over it. 

And now Charlotte is back. 

Ted falls asleep caught in the same stupid thoughts he’s been trying to shake off for the last six years, and he feels like a goddamn idiot. 

‘I didn’t think it would be this many people around here.’

Charlotte’s right. It’s full, at the beach, like every damn year. And Ted would usually never show up here, and he definitely is ready to complain. 

It’s the look on Charlotte’s face, though, that ultimately shuts him the hell up. 

She’s wearing the sun hat again. She’s got one hand on it to keep it from being swept up by the wind. She’s looking over the beach with a quiet smile on her face. Ted tries not to grin at her too dumbly. He supposes it’s not exactly working very well. 

‘Yeah, you know,’ he says. ‘Almost everyone watches the fireworks from here. It’s just the best view.’ He sticks his hands into his pockets. ‘The young people go get drunk afterwards, everyone else goes to sleep. I mean, I assume. It’s what I do, at least.’

‘Oh, yeah?’, Charlotte asks, looking at him. ‘That’s really what you do every year? You’ve never once gotten drunk - I don’t know, with friends? Coworkers?’ Ted snorts. ‘Oh, please,’ he says. ‘I’ve gotten old. I can’t get drunk without falling asleep immediately.’ 

He bumps into Charlotte with his shoulder. ‘What do _you_ do on a day like this?’

Charlotte laughs. ‘What, in Hatchetfield? Come on. I’m not even sure if there’s professional fireworks there. Everything is immediately sucked up by the clouds.’

Ted snorts. ‘Yeah, I remember that. Well, here you’re gonna get the exact opposite of Hatchetfield.’ 

‘That’s right,’ Charlotte says quietly. 

And then none of them say anything for a moment. 

Ted clears his throat. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You want something to drink? Something to eat?’

They spend most of the afternoon walking up and down the beach watching people and feeling old. But they’re doing it together, and that’s oddly the most fun he’s ever had on the Fourth of July. 

Once it’s time for the fireworks, it grows quiet around the two of them. The rest of the beach is still wide awake, and ready to have fun. 

‘I wonder if we’re in the wrong crowd here,’ Charlotte mutters. Ted just snorts. ‘Oh please,’ he says. ‘Have you looked at me? I live in California. I ask myself that question every single day of my life.’ 

Charlotte just chuckles, and then, the most magical thing in the entire world happens. Ted can’t actually comprehend it for a few moments. 

Charlotte takes his hand. 

She doesn’t just take it to softly squeeze it for a moment and then let go. She actually takes it, and then keeps holding it. Ted’s heart stops. He looks at Charlotte. And Charlotte looks at him. 

He thinks the world might actually stop turning for a second. 

Then the second is over, and the world resumes turning, and the fireworks explode around them, and they’re still. Looking at each other. 

Ted isn’t sure what happens next. He doesn’t know if Charlotte wraps her arms around his neck first or his Ted takes her face into his hands first. 

All he knows is that everything is loud and colorful, and warm, and that they’re kissing. 

Oh, god. He’s _kissing_ Charlotte. 

And Charlotte is kissing him _back._

Charlotte’s grip on him tightens when his knees nearly give in. She pulls him closer to him and all the air drains out of Ted’s lungs. 

He hasn’t felt this good since he left Hatchetfield. Maybe ever. 

When they let go of each other, the whole world is still turning like normal, even though for Ted it feels like maybe it was thrown around and kicked into another orbit for a bit. But nothing has changed. The fireworks are still going on, people are cheering, no one is paying attention to the two of them.

And Ted’s heart is still beating stupidly fast. He has no idea what to do next. All he can do is stare at Charlotte and realise that, hang on, this was a terrible idea. 

Why the fuck would they do something like that? 

A similar thought seems to be dawning on Charlotte’s face. 

Fuck. Maybe he should just kiss her again. Then they won’t have to think about anything else for a few more moments. That would be a good idea, right? 

‘Oh god,’ Charlotte says. She grabs his hand, and then lets go immediately like she burned it. ‘Ted, I’m so sorry. That was-’

‘A mistake,’ Ted says, with a hoarse voice, ‘yeah. I’m sorry, too.’ 

‘I don’t know what I was thinking, I just- I-’ Charlotte gives him an unreadable look. Ted has a hard time finding regret in it, which means he’s apparently desperate enough to actually lose his mind. 

‘I know,’ Ted says. ‘Me too. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.’ He thinks about taking her hand, and doesn’t. ‘Let’s just- let’s just watch the fireworks, okay?’ 

Charlotte nods. And then they do. 

And Ted feels like the biggest idiot in the world. 

The fireworks are really nice, though. Ted can’t wait to spend this day locked in his apartment with the blinds closed watching TV next year. 

They don’t speak for a long while after the kiss. When Charlotte finally says something they’re already on the way back to Ted’s home. 

‘Ted,’ she says slowly, like she’s expecting to change her mind, ‘can I ask you something?’

Ted clears his throat. He has his hands in his pockets and isn’t thinking about taking Charlotte’s instead. Nope, not at all. 

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Shoot.’

‘I was just thinking,’ she says. Then, very quietly, she adds, ‘about the voice messages.’

Oh, right. This is the day everything goes to shit. 

‘Oh,’ Ted says. 

‘I was just- I- I was just wondering why you stopped. Sending them, I mean.’ 

Ted takes one deep breath, then takes another. ‘You mean- what, two years ago?’

‘I know,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s been years, I don’t know why I’m asking. But I just- I can’t stop thinking. It was- I don’t know, did you meet someone? Did you make a decision? Did anything happen?’ She looks down on her hands. ‘I don’t know, this is a stupid question, I’m sorry, I-’

Ted laughs, quietly. Charlotte turns to him. 

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry. You just- you just sounded so much like you used to.’ He pulls a face when he sees Charlotte’s expression. ‘Sorry, nevermind.’

He thinks about how the fuck he’s going to answer that question. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a good answer? If he could just say, ‘oh yeah, Charlotte, I actually fell in love and I’m here now and happy and I didn’t think about you at all’?

'The reason I stopped, huh?' Ted lets out a breath that's way too shaky and runs a hand through his hair. A billion lies are going through his head, some practised, some not. Some are actually really good, and could end this conversation very quickly. Unfortunately they run through his head with a speed that makes it impossible for Ted to catch a glimpse of them or actually just have one nice and coherent thought, now that he thinks about it, he seems to be really not up to having this kind of conversation, maybe he should just not say anything, maybe he should just turn around and- 

'The reason I stopped is because I filled up your phone's storage completely. I tried to keep going but-' He laughs, like a goddamn idiot. All of the air seems to have drained out of his lungs all at once. Ted feels very, very heavy. 'It wouldn't let me. And- I mean, don't get me wrong, I always knew you probably weren't listening, but when I realised that there were all of these messages piling up and up and collecting dust and no one listened to them until the phone is literally full- I realised that there really was no point to it, you know? No one at the other end. And I stopped. I had no choice, obviously. But still, yeah. That was that.' 

He shakes his head over himself. 'I probably would have kept going forever, if that hadn't happened.'

He laughs. Again. He is so stupid. He’s spent so many years like this, had so much time to learn from his mistakes, and now? He’s still the same idiot. 

Charlotte looks at him. They’re still walking, almost at the door to Ted’s apartment building. She doesn’t say anything for a while, until there’s very quiet, ‘Ted, I-’

‘It’s fine, it’s-’ Ted sighs. ‘Come on, shut up. I’m good, I’m here, and you don’t have to say anything.’ He grins. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t stop. I probably really should have. God, I’m sorry for clogging up your phone. I still can’t believe it. I sent so many fucking messages.’ 

He laughs. He’s starting to realise that there really isn’t anything all that funny about it. But what the fuck else is he supposed to do?

‘I listened to all of them,’ Charlotte says lowly. ‘Every single one. All the years.’ She clears her throat. ‘Every single message,’ she says again. 

They’ve made it to the building. Ted unlocks the front door and lets Charlotte in. 

‘I’m really sorry,’ he says again. ‘I don’t really know why you came here. But if you came for an apology, which- fuck, you definitely deserve, then there it is. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I can’t say this enough, Charlotte. I’m sorry.’

They’re in the apartment now. Charlotte is wearing the tiniest, saddest smile. ‘You have apologised, you know. Many times.’ 

Ted looks at her like she lost her mind. She actually almost laughs. 

‘In the messages, I mean.’

‘Oh.’ Ted pulls a pained face. ‘I guess I did.’ He tries to smile, fails. ‘Might have not really stopped apologising. I don’t- I don’t remember everything I said, to be honest.’

Charlotte looks at him for a while. Then, she smiles wider. ‘That’s a lie, isn’t it?’

Ted exhales in a way that can be easily mistaken for a laugh. ‘No, yeah, that was not even a little bit true. My bad. Worth a shot.’ 

Charlotte says, ‘Yeah.’

And then it’s quiet again. 

Ted feels like chewing off his own tongue for a few minutes, then he says, ‘Well, I guess we should go to sleep.’ He looks as far away from Charlotte as he probably can. ‘You know, big day tomorrow.’

‘Right,’ Charlotte says slowly, then she nods. ‘Right.’ This time, she sounds like she’s actually there. ‘Yeah, no, you’re right. I’m just gonna-’ She turns around, walks a few steps towards the bathroom door, stops. ‘Good night,’ she says. 

‘Good night,’ Ted says. He watches Charlotte walk the last few steps towards the door and wants to apologise. He wants to apologise a billion more times for a billion more things. Not for kissing her. Maybe for wanting to kiss her. 

God, he really wants to kiss her. Why did the think that was a mistake? He’s very sure that all of his problems would go away if he just walked over there and kissed her again, and then maybe a couple more times. 

But he doesn’t. Because he moved across the country to help Charlotte let go of him and move on, and he’s never stopped loving her, and having all that be for nothing would be-

Stupid. Ted is trying to be less stupid. So all he does is watch Charlotte walk. 

She’s the one that turns around, in the end. She takes her hand off the doorknob and says, ‘Ted.’

‘Yeah?’ Ted pretends that he can breathe just fine, and yeah, that works just fine. ‘Everything okay?’

Charlotte has a deep frown on her face. ‘Ted, I never- I never apologised to _you._ And I really should. I’m sorry.’

Ted snorts. ‘Charlotte, you really don’t have to-’

Charlotte ignores him. 

‘I’m sorry for everything that happened. I’m sorry that you had to leave, that I made you- I’m sorry I hurt you.’

Ted shakes his head. ‘Charlotte, come on, I hurt you, too. I hurt you bad.’ 

He takes one step, another step towards her. ‘I mean, I knew what you were going through. I knew how hard it was, and I could have- I should have helped you instead of just pretending I wasn’t lonely and didn’t need you and wasn’t-’ His breath catches. He drags his hand across his face. ‘I didn’t even try to help you even though I-’

Ted, don’t. Shut. Your damn mouth. 

‘Even though I-’ 

I swear to god, Ted, if you don’t shut up right this second, I’m going to-

‘I love you.’ 

Oh god. Ted, now you did it, now you fucked up-

Hang on. Hang on. Ted didn’t say anything. 

Ted didn’t say anything?

Ted’s mouth falls open. ‘You-’ He stops, catches himself. ‘What did you say?’

Charlotte is still standing there, in the half-dark. There’s an expression on her face that’s the softest thing Ted has ever seen. His knees are about to give in. He is also about to die. 

But Charlotte says it again. She says, ‘I love you.’ 

She’s wringing her hands. She looks nervous, a little. It’s a very familiar sound. 

‘I’ve heard you say it so many times- that was a week ago, Ted.’ She smiles. ‘And it’s so stupid- I mean, you said all of these things years ago, and I just heard them now, and- well, it made me realise some things.’ She takes one step towards Ted. ‘And then I came here, and I realised some more.’ She laughs, quietly. ‘But Ted, it’s been so long since you- you’ve changed so much.’

‘You think I-’ Ted laughs. ‘God, you think I stopped loving you? You think I could ever stop fucking loving you?’ 

Charlotte doesn’t say anything. She’s just looking at him with very wide eyes. 

‘Come on,’ Ted says. He suddenly finds he can’t quite stop smiling. ‘You don’t really think that this- any of this, moving to California, leaving everything behind- that it worked? I didn’t stop thinking about you for years. Even when you were knocking at my door that morning - I was thinking about you. I never- I never stopped. Never stopped loving you.’ 

Charlotte looks at him. She takes a deep breath. Then she laughs. Once. And then again. And then she covers her face in her hands for a short moment. 

‘Ted,’ she says. ‘God, you- you can’t be serious.’ 

‘I know,’ Ted says, now grinning like an idiot. ‘I know, it’s stupid, it’s-’

‘No,’ Charlotte says. ‘No, that’s not what I mean.’ 

Ted is just about to ask what she means when she starts walking towards Ted. She takes his hands into hers for a split second and then she pulls him down by the collar and kisses him. 

And even though it’s been almost an hour since he’s seen them - and honestly, he wasn’t even paying that much attention back then - it feels like fucking fireworks. 

He’s kissed Charlotte a million times before. Charlotte has kissed him not quite as many times, but still- they’ve known each other for long, and there’s been enough kisses. 

There hasn’t been any kiss like this ever before. 

He breaks out into a smile against Charlotte’s lips and pulls her closer. Charlotte’s fingers are all over his hair. Ted feels like he’s about to float right off the planet like the biggest idiot of all time, and he doesn’t even mind. Not even a little. 

When they let go, Ted feels like every bit of weight he’s been carrying around for the past week is gone. Judging from the look on Charlotte’s face, she’s not feeling all that different. 

‘Wow,’ Ted says breathlessly. Charlotte snorts. 

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ she says. 

She presses her forehead against Ted’s. 

‘That _was_ a real close one, though,’ she says, and Ted laughs. ‘Shut up,’ he says. 

Neither Ted nor Charlotte have no idea what’s going to happen next. There’s something waiting for Charlotte in Hatchetfield. Ted has- well, something going on right here. There’s a lot of weird and unanswered questions between them. 

Ted doesn’t really give a shit about any of this at the moment. There’s just one thing that matters, and that’s Charlotte, right here. Putting her arms around him and breathing calmly. 

It’s more than enough for Ted to know that everything is going to be okay.


End file.
